Hoffman Compares U.S. Division to Vietnam at Czech Festival
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- Dustin Hoffman told the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday that the U.S. is "as divided" today as during the Vietnam War, while introducing a screening of "The Graduate" (1967) that he personally selected.
- Hoffman received the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the festival's opening ceremony on Friday, the festival's top honor.
- Hoffman linked "The Graduate's" themes to the present, noting that Charles Webb wrote the source novel in 1964 — before Vietnam — and arguing that the parents' generation came out of the Great Depression with jobs but gave "objects" instead of love.
- Addressing 20-somethings in the audience, Hoffman joked that nobody knows who they are in their early 20s — and that he's still trying to figure it out himself, drawing laughter from the Czech crowd.
- Hoffman said director Mike Nichols had spent nearly two years searching for a lead and was about to scrap the film before Hoffman's and Katharine Ross's audition on what turned out to be the final day of casting.
- The festival runs July 3 to 11 in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.
Why it matters: Hoffman's Vietnam-era comparison landed at a moment when he was being celebrated by a major international film festival, giving the political remark a platform tied to a lifetime-achievement honor. Festival artistic director Karel Och framed the conversation around how "The Graduate" can still speak to twentysomethings, and Hoffman's answer explicitly tied that question to today's American polarization and generational identity.
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