Mr. Nichols, You Have Seduced Me.

Mike Nichols, one of the most prolific directors of both cinema and the stage, died on Wednesday at the age of 83. Born in Germany and raised in New York after he and his parents fled Nazi-occupied Europe, Nichols developed a passion for theatre and film at an early age. When he attended the University of Chicago, comic gold was struck when he fell into company with Elaine May, in which both of them formed the iconic comic duo, Nichols and May. Both received glowing reviews for their live performances on Broadway in the late-Fifties and early-Sixties before Nichols made his directorial debut with the controversial adaptation of Edward Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The film was a success and led Nichols to his second film in 1967, which earned him his only Academy Award for Best Director, The Graduate. For his work as a director on Broadway, he would be awarded thirteen Tony awards for his productions as diverse as Barefoot in the Park, Spamalot, and Death of a Salesman.

I remember the first time I watched The Graduate when I was 14. I was sitting in my brother's bedroom flipping through the channels until I saw Dustin Hoffman walking through an airport as the sounds of Simon & Garfunkel filled the screen. For the next two hours, I was hooked to the surreal and hilarious story of Benjamin Braddock's sordid affair with Mrs. Robinson. The last shot of the film, in which Benjamin helps Elaine, Mrs. Robinson's daughter, escape her own wedding via bus, left me scratching my head with its anti-climatic ending as both of them go from laughing to just staring aimlessly from the back of the bus as it drove off to wherever it was going. It wasn't until I graduated both high school and college that I felt like Dustin Hoffman in the back of the bus staring aimlessly and wondering what would happen next.

A second revelation I had regarding my connection to Mike Nichols was when I saw his 2003 adaptation of Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America. The story of two HIV/AIDS patients questioning their own mortality struck me at a time when I realized that death was coming close to those near and dear to me. At the time when the film was released, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and she would have another 5 years left to live on this earth. I would watch Angels In America as a form of catharsis as it channelled the anger and frustration of dealing with one of the most inevitable things in our lives, which is death. Rather than observing death in a morbid manner, Mike Nichols and Tony Kushner examined the power of beliefs; not in any religious sense, but in terms of an idea beholden to us that we need to face the day. Last week, after my second grandmother passed away, I retreated back to that film.

Mike Nichols once said, "A movie is like a person; either you trust it or you don't." Nichols' films ranged from the deeply poignant, such as Wit and Regarding Henry, to the deeply funny, like The Graduate or The Birdcage.  In the case of his films, they were an extension of who he was as a comic, dramatist, a lover of film, and of the stage. Mike Nichols remains a person anyone can trust as were his films.