After reading Mark Harris' great book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, about the five movies nominated for Best Picture of 1967, I think that's the reason The Graduate was embraced by the youth, despite not being If you look at the movies made by Hollywood that did comment about the counterculture, they were very condescending and judgemental. "These crazy kids with their long hair, loud music!" Hippies were figures of ridicule at best and dangerous drug-crazed monsters at worst. The Graduate was the first mainstream movie that showed it was the older generation who was corrupt and materialistic. Their values were shallow and amoral. It's why the college rejected Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner despite it interracial romance. They didn't like that Sidney Poitier had to ask permission from Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, his white fiancee's parents before marrying her. They didn't care about a story of an old liberal overcoming his own prejudices to accept him. They would have preferred the couple eloped and didn't give a damn what her parents thought.
Benjamin, despite being a complete mess of a human being was a hero for saving Elaine and taking away from the fate of being like her mother. Will they stay together? Probably not. That's the thing I take away from the final shot. The future is now uncertain. Elaine is scared but Benjamin is free.
