Good Will Hunting

Year Released: 1997

Runtime: 126 minutes

Directed: Gus Van Sant

Produced: Lawrence Bender, Harvey Weinstein (regrettably), Scott Mosier

Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgard

Oscars: Won: Best Supporting Actor (Williams), Best Original Screenplay Nominated: Best Picture, Best Actor (Damon), Best Supporting Actress (Driver), Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Song, Best Score

IMDb Plot Summary: Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life.

Context, Context, Context: What Created Good Will Hunting, and Why it’s Still Relevant

Just a kid from Boston. Believe it or not, there was a time when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were D-list actors who might have been recognized in School Ties or Courage Under Fire. Matt Damon wrote this script based off an idea that he had while in his fifth year at Harvard and brought in his childhood friend Ben Affleck to help round out the story and give the dialogue some flair. This is one of the most personal films that I’ve reviewed; Matt Damon drew from his idea of a genius kid from South Boston who needs therapy and turned it into a wonderful and ultimately uplifting film. Harvey Weinstein became heavily involved as the script was shopped around Hollywood, with icons like Rob Reiner and William Goldman giving their input. Their biggest change was a good one; the film was originally going to center around the government’s pursuit of Will, but they convinced him that his relationships and therapy sessions were a better driving force for the story. Weinstein ensured that the two would get to star in the film (their biggest demand), and directing duties ultimately fell to indie voice Gus Van Sant. The most critical aspect of this film getting made, however, was Robin Williams’ attachment to the project. After he signed on, it became a matter of “how”, not “if”.

The legacy of Good Will Hunting. I dare you to find a better Hollywood success story. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were catapulted to superstardom, and their careers continue to this day. They shared the credit and the Oscar for Best Screenplay, and it remains one of the best original screenplays since its debut. The film is beloved to this day, and while it didn’t present too many radical new ideas or push filmmaking forward, it proved that a good script including drama and comedy, heartbreaking and heartwarming moments can still win the audience over when paired with good direction and terrific performances. This film can proudly stand among L.A. Confidential, Boogie Nights and Titanic (in that order), as 1997’s best. In addition to the legacy of Matt and Ben, this film carries two other legacies, fully encapsulating the two sides of the Hollywood coin. The first being that the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s patterns of sexual assault continue to taint the films he was involved in but will never undermine their quality. The second is with the beloved and respected Robin Williams’ life being tragically cut short, many people (including me) look back upon this role as the best in his career, and the one that best captures his talent and soul.

The Story and its Characters

Male vulnerability. After being honed down, the film’s remaining script focused on Will’s character growth and dealing with his past trauma and current relationships, and it does so very tenderly. With the disclaimer that Robin Williams is not practicing super professional therapy (something my girlfriend stressed), those scenes remain some of the most moving portrayals of the field I’ve seen. In 1997, we were at a quite different place in terms of therapy’s social acceptance, and I believe this film did a lot to destigmatize the practice and those who seek it out. The film alternates between Will in several settings at the most crucial time in his life: in therapy, with his new girlfriend, with the professor taking advantage of his genius, and with his friends. However, Damon and Affleck’s talent for dialogue gives these disparate settings common threads and themes throughout. The viewer also gets a sense that all these different settings are not just places that Will likes to spend his time; they are all different forces that threaten to push and pull him in different ways. Each provides him with a different life path, yet each of those life paths have their own pros and cons, and each viewer chooses which one would be best for Will. In the brilliant end, however, we see him reject all the paths laid down for him in order to pursue the one that he himself destroyed – it’s not about if Skylar will take him back, it’s about the fact that he now has the courage to go. This is a wonderful turn for the movie to take in its final moments, since just minutes before the audience was happy enough when he pursued the professor’s “good path” of a corporate job and a road out of poverty and the tough South Boston neighborhood. However, Will’s self-determined choice is the truly best way to end the film in iconic fashion.

The performances. As is always the case, an excellent screenplay can be ruined by poor performances; the actors saying the words and inhabiting the characters bring the brilliant words to life. This film’s legacy is a testament to the excellent performances on display. Ben Affleck is utterly charming as Will’s rough-and-tumble best friend Chuckie, whose true care for Will is almost entirely buried behind a tough guy front but is still unmistakable. Casey Affleck also shines as Morgan from that friend group, who was allowed to improvise a lot of his own lines – an early indicator of a great career to come. Stellan Skarsgard was a perfect choice for the awkward, self-obsessed professor, and was asked to essentially repeat that role 13 years later for Thor. Minnie Driver gives a very well-rounded performance as Skylar, who is both yet another force on Will’s life, and a fully realized character in her own right. Driver brings a very grounded performance, creating a very realistic character with realistic emotions. Matt Damon, of course, carries the film as the titular Will Hunting, who is funny, tragic, intimidating, lovable, despicable, all at once; yet Damon’s natural charisma keep us along for the ride, and as we learn more about Will’s troubled upbringing, we cheer for him to be healed. The best performance in the movie, however, is the one doing the healing. If you want to look at how an actor’s personality bleeds through into a role, and how that role in turn shapes what we think of the actor, look no further than Robin William’s moving performance as Sean Maguire in this movie.

Technicalities

Just a splash of arthouse. Prior to making this film, Gus Van Sant had directed the indie hits Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho – both centered around troubled young men searching for meaning. While “movie people” knew and loved his previous work, he had yet to make something successful with both critics and the mainstream when he was approached by the Good Will Hunting team to make this film. Van Sant walks a very fine line in this film between arthouse and mainstream, employing rather simple camera moves (when it moves at all) to capture any given scene’s drama or humor by keeping the focus on the actors. There’s very little flashy going on in this movie technically, including the editing; Van Sant was mature enough at an early point in his career to let the material he was filming speak for itself, creating an easy film to approach. There are a few artistic flourishes that stand out, including the film’s soundtrack, which is a mix of an almost eerie Danny Elfman score and some late 90’s indie folk rock. My favorite example of this movie’s rare artistry is its use of golden light. A lot of the colors in the film seem to point to gold, and many scenes make use of golden light (think of most of the Godfather for comparison). This effect helps the film to be instantly timeless but creates another effect: the golden light suggests either a sunrise or a sunset. If Will makes the wrong choice at this juncture in his life, he’s looking at a sunset. At the end, however, we see the movie is the dawn of his new self-determined life.

John’s Highlight Reel

· “Do you like apples?” We’ve seen hints of Will’s genius before this when he solved the opening math problem that Professor Lambeau had posed to his students, but when he pulls out an encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. history texts in a bar to back up Chuckie, we fully realize the extent of how his character is constructed. This scene is both consequential for the plot and utterly enjoyable, as well as a perfect example of the quotable dialogue this film would come to be known for.

· Paint By Number. So much of this film revolves around scenes where Will is challenged by people including Skylar, Sean, but in this scene he and the professor match wits directly. We are treated to some fast-paced “tough Boston” dialogue where the professor realizes he’s outmatched, but leans back on the upper hand that the judge has given him: he is the only thing keeping Will out of prison. This scene exemplifies Will’s tough exterior and defense mechanisms that Sean will work to break down during the upcoming therapy sessions.

· “Your move, chief.” This is the scene for Williams’ character, and my favorite in the whole movie. He brilliantly disarms Will by bringing him to a park bench, and in one of the best film monologues I’ve witnessed (all captured in a brilliant close long take), he uses several examples of what we come to realize is a profound life to respond to Will’s earlier claims about him, and challenge Will to be vulnerable. For the first time, Will is truly outmatched.

· Early therapy sessions. In these early sessions, the focus is more on the charm and early vulnerability between the two men. It’s a quite simple pleasure to watch this friendship and mentor relationship blossom, and it features dialogue that is in turns funny, tender, and profound – what this movie does best. Sean’s character and own need for growth become explored during these sessions (a no-go for real therapists), creating an interesting dynamic as the movie progresses.

· “I don’t love you.” With the amount of break ups that happen in movies, certain trends and clichés have emerged that threaten to take their power away as a source of heartbreak. However, this is one of the rare films (in the company of La La Land) whose break ups seem both preventable and inevitable. Preventable, because both characters have been holding aspects of themselves back, especially Will; if they were to be completely vulnerable with each other, they might have a chance. Inevitable, because it is Will’s nature to be defensive; as Skylar tries to break down the barriers, Will rejects her out of fear of being abandoned.

· The NSA. This scene is probably a remnant of the first version of the script (focusing on a government pursuit of our genius Boston boy), but it is still undeniably smartly written and filmed. Will meets with a wonderfully bland NSA agent in a wonderfully bland office and lays out a wild, nihilistic, and politically charged scenario of why he shouldn’t work for the NSA. Your anti-government friends still share that clip on social media, but it is so perfectly edited that I had to include it here; halfway through his rapid monologue, we switch to a close-up on Will’s face that pushes in, then pulls out to reveal that he’s sitting in Sean’s office recounting the whole thing hours later. It’s a smart, fun bit of filmmaking that says as much about Will’s view about the world as it does the world itself.

· “You’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket.” If you ever forget that Ben Affleck can’t act, look at what he does with this scene. Chuckie convinces Will to take his gift seriously, claiming that he surrounds himself with people who would trade anything to be like him and leave South Boston. This is the rare moment where Chuckie shows any vulnerability, and it’s still being repressed with tough talk and body language, but Affleck’s face tells a completely different story.

· “Not your fault.” Following a very well-written fight between the professor and Sean about how to deal with Will, the film’s most famous and powerful dramatized therapy scene takes place. The writing and acting on display as they discuss the abuse they were both subjected to are incredible, and the emotions Will has been suppressing for the whole film finally release. The movie’s theme of male vulnerability is finally crystallized, and this scene is just as powerful 23 years on.

· The Ending. In a semi-predictable but very satisfying ending montage, we see Chuckie get the conclusion with Will he always wanted, a fun send-up of an earlier line that Sean said, and a brilliant closing shot of Will driving west to go find Skylar as the credits begin to roll. A wonderful way to stick the landing on a wonderful movie.

Came for _____, Stayed for ______

Damon. This movie was first introduced to me while I was in high school, and I was (and still am) a huge Matt Damon fan. When I found out that he had written this movie, and that it was very funny and heartfelt at the same time, I was in right away. Will Hunting as a character also doesn’t disappoint; he’s very well-rounded, pairing charisma with a roughness, and is a smartass but likable at the same time. Watching him overcome hardship is a rewarding movie experience, which should not go overlooked.

Williams. The nostalgia factor for Robin Williams is definitely real, but he more than earned the Oscar this year. If Will is the brain and heart of this movie, then Sean is undoubtedly the soul of this movie, and I cannot think of a better choice to have played Sean. It was Williams’ involvement that ensured this movie would be made, and his performance immediately immortalized it. This was the best of his career and the one that has most informed the way that we continue to think of him; thanks for the laughs and encouragement, Robin.