The Graduates comes from that long line of modern-day movies where not many things happen; instead, you get to meet a few (mostly) relatable characters and follow them around for a while. However, if moody cinema is your thing, then I’m sure Hannah Peterson’s debut feature worked for you. Not sure if this information is relevant, but American indie cinema happens to be my favorite genre. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I said that I based my personality on the genre thanks to watching a lot of these movies during my formative years as a cinema enthusiast (not all that fond of the word ‘cinephile’). The most admirable thing about The Graduates is not using any flashback scene, which has to be a deliberate creative choice. It only ensures that the movie is really about the aftermath of the tragedy—that too a common one, given school shootings are a regular thing in America, unfortunately—and how our main characters are dealing with it.
Spoilers Ahead
What is the movie about?
We’re dropped into the middle of the story without any detail about the shooting (I personally love an opening like this so much). In a small town in Utah, Tyler was one of the unfortunate victims of a school shooting that happened a year ago. Genevieve, aka Gen (Mina Sundwall from Lost in Space in her career-best turn), Tyler’s girlfriend, hasn’t been able to move on. With her high school graduation approaching soon, she is missing him more severely, as they were going to make it there together. The Graduates doesn’t give us much about the relationship between Tyler and Gen, but we can assume that it was mostly bright and sunny—the kind of vibrant thing you’d expect with regular high schoolers. It might sound cliché, but it was also filled with laughter, given Tyler was quite the jokester—who used to have an obsession over chicken nuggets that he would secretly eat during asparagus soup dinners at Gen’s house, as shared by Gen at a support group meeting.
Gen is not the only one who lost a piece of herself, though. Tyler’s best friend, Ben (Alex R. Hibbert from Moonlight), continues to suffer from survivor’s guilt. Unable to process the tragedy, he moved to Jefferson and enrolled at a different school. He also stopped playing basketball—something he was really good at, as we get to know that Ben played a huge role in taking the school team to two state championships—probably because it reminded him of Tyler, as they used to play together. The Graduates begins with Ben dropping out from his new school, returning back to the town, and taking his old part-time job back (where he also had Tyler as a colleague). He’s eyeing his GED, though, and still hoping for a future at college.
Meanwhile Tyler’s dad, John (a fantastic John Cho, like always), happens to be the coach of the basketball team, who has decided to stay on. His wife (who could also be a girlfriend/fiance; it is not clear) urges him to move to Houston on video call, while he receives cooking instructions from her and says goodnight to their daughter. In a scene that comes much later, we hear John mentioning to Gen that it was Tyler who pushed him to become a basketball coach so that they could spend more time together. I believe Tyler is John’s son from a past marriage or relationship, but it is evident that the father and son were very close.
Apart from Gen, Ben, and John, who are our three definitive main characters, there are some essential supporting characters as well—who are, sadly, quite underdeveloped. Kelly O. Sullivan’s guidance counselor, Ms. Vicky, and Maria Dizzia’s Maggie—who’s Gen’s mother—still manage to make an impact, though, mainly due to their strong acting. I really wished Ewan Manley’s Becker and Yasmeen Fletcher’s Romi were fleshed out better by the director. They appear to be a couple who are part of the group—with Gen, Ben, and (the now dead) Tyler. Romi is also Gen’s best friend, a relationship the movie chooses to leave under-explored.
How do Gen, Ben, and John deal with their grief?
Even though the three of them have shared grief, they’re all different individuals, so it’s only natural that their reactions to the loss are also different. Despite trying his best to be okay, Ben is clearly not succeeding. Throughout the movie, he keeps sending these voicemails to Tyler’s phone about how he’s doing overall, how much he misses him, and so on. And given Ben’s doing it in a manner where he’s trying to pretend that Tyler is not dead, it is quite heartbreaking. Gen, on the other hand, is mad at Ben for abandoning her right after Tyler’s death. This only implies these two were also inseparable. They do share a kiss together, although I believe that was just a ‘something about the moment’ thing, and there’s not necessarily anything romantic happening. In what I considered to be the defining scene of The Graduates, Ben apologizes to Gen for leaving, before crying his heart out while regretting not being there for Tyler when the shooting happened. Gen ends up comforting him and also lets him know that she’s glad that he’s not dead. I suppose this is the moment where their griefs finally align, as opposed to the one where she screamed at him, telling him her loss is bigger than his.
Gen’s personal struggle with an uncertain future also gets a lot of focus, as it should. When she’s rejected from NYU, she is further depressed and starts believing there’s no hope for her. It is riveting to see her mother, Maggie, standing beside her throughout all this. That’s just what you need to do as a parent, and Maggie is the model of motherhood. When Gen finally gets the call from Langley University (I had to pause, take a screenshot, and zoom in to get the detail), Maggie is expectedly overjoyed as her daughter stepping into the world outside the small town is a huge win for her. The Graduates doesn’t explicitly talk about the topic of getting out of the small town and making it to the vast world of possibilities (unlike movies like Columbus or Tu Dors Nichole; both are fantastic gems that you need to check out if you haven’t), but it is still quite omnipresent.
For a movie like The Graduates, a lot actually depends on tiny narrative choices—like the one where, unable to find Maggie anywhere, Gen goes to John to give him the good news of her getting into college. By making him the first person to know about this, the movie practically strengthens the bond between John and his dead son’s girlfriend. It also serves as the reason for him staying in the town and working at the school where his son died. Tyler might have died, but his memories are not gone. For John, his son lives on in Gen, Ben, and the basketball team. The casual reveal of John holding on to Tyler’s phone and listening to all the voicemails (mostly sent by Ben and Gen) is another sign of that. In a way, this is how John is actually staying close to Tyler, which is both heartbreaking and uplifting.
What does John leave for Gen?
I’m going to go a bit off track here by bringing up the beloved teenage drama One Tree Hill (although it eventually became much more than that), simply because of the fact that The Graduates actually has a lot in common with it. Be it the school shooting or the friendship or the basketball, the movie does seem like a long-lost cousin of the show. As a huge fan of the show, this means a lot to me. Although the show was miles ahead when it came to developing the characters—both major and minor—it’s also unfair to blame a ninety-minute-long movie for not taking that (literally impossible) route.
Now, coming to The Graduates’ ending, there had to be a point where everything came together for everyone—by that I only mean John, Gen, and Ben here. For John, it has to be the final basketball game, which the Lewis’ (that’s what the school team is called) win, although it wouldn’t have mattered if they had lost too. Gen attending the game, all happy and smiling, is the most essential thing here for John. It is clear that when Tyler was alive, she used to come to every game, cheering for him, and she stopped doing that after he was no more. So her return to the gym is like a flicker of light, more so for John than her. John’s reaction after the game—of just sitting at his chair, looking down at the ground while his team celebrates—is an unintentional (unless the director is a fan of SRK) reference to the climax of Shimit Amin’s Chak De! India (2007), which I consider to be the greatest sports film to have come out from India. Of course, the team doesn’t forget their coach, as we see them bringing John into the fold of the celebration a second later.
We don’t see Ben attending the basketball game, though, which proves the director is not too keen about going overly melodramatic. This is a creative decision I can get behind. To prove my point further, we do see Ben quietly visiting the school, standing in front of the memorial wall before taking the graduation robes from Ms. Vicky. The counselor plays a catalyst in Ben coming here, though, as we’ve already seen her urging him to get his graduation from the school. Ben taking the robe and putting it inside Tyler’s locker at their workplace (another thing that has little relevance, but it’s most likely a local dinner) is a beautiful, heartfelt gesture and also implies him finally coming to terms with the new normal.
One might wonder why exactly John chooses to move—we see his wife/partner and daughter arriving to help him with that—and my answer to that would be he is finally choosing to move on. Death is something that can never be changed, but The Graduates keeps emphasizing the fact that for the ones who are alive, life keeps going on as the sun rises and sets every single day. Thanks to how the director has handled the story, the message comes as a natural outcome and (thankfully) not preachy. Before John leaves town, Gen arrives to meet him. He bids her goodbye and also lets her know that he has left something (of Tyler) for her inside the house. When she enters the empty home and goes inside Tyler’s room, she finds a pendant. It was Tyler’s, of course, and Gen is most certainly the right person to have it. One thing you may have missed here is the room is filled with bright daylight. You can even see a block of sunlight on the yellow walls. This, I suppose, is the director subtly telling us that John is not only leaving his son’s pendant with Gen; he is also giving her the most important thing that she needs—hope. Another interesting thing here is we also get a glimpse of Ben, Romi, and Becker at Gen’s house, eating together with Maggie serving them something that’s ‘not vegetables’ for once. All of them seem to be finally okay, which is reassuring.
The Graduates’s final shot is a close-up of Gen’s face, looking at the table, with a face both happy and sad. It’s still not easy for her to let go of Tyler, but she has also managed to reach the point where she can look forward. I guess that’s the kind of life lesson The Graduates wants to leave us with.
P.S: Did you see Chloe Zhao’s name as one of the executive producers? The Graduates is very similar to the kind of cinema Zhao makes (barring MCU’s Eternals), and it’s a good thing that she’s now doing her bit supporting others who are on the same path as hers. Cho is also an executive producer on this, which only means the actor has a sense of getting involved with all the right films.
