I’ve grown to love “Good Will Hunting” so much. I recommend you take a look at this film, and for those who’ve seen already it – take a second look. One of the main reasons is the many messages one takes away from this film. At first glance the film seemed so simple and predictable yet such a crowd pleaser. Its simplicity is deceiving for the film and its story comes across as effortless. The biggest takeaway and the reason I find the film so needed are its lessons about overcoming our personal feelings of resentment and self-doubt.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the script for “Good Will Hunting.” It follows South Boston working class 20 year-old Will who is an unrecognized genius that works as a janitor at MIT – where one day he solves a graduate level math problem proposed by Professor Gerald Lambeau. Lambeau takes an interest on Will and his ill-advised choices in life and gets him to seek guidance from a therapist. Will’s friends and also a budding romance with a pre-med student – Skylar – figure as well in the story. All of these characters play a role in Will’s journey – as they help him to overcome the scars from his troubled childhood, encouraged him to trust and reach his potential.
Since the story is built around Will, you can overlook the other relationships that are symmetrical and mirror images. Lambeau and the therapist, Sean – were college roommates and have themselves unresolved issues of resentment and self-doubt. Notice their dynamic and the push and pull between them – as well as the one between Will and Skylar – which also mirrors the therapist’s relationship with his late wife. And there’s also the relationship between Will and his neighborhood friends (which include Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck.) There’s a connectivity, caring and support for each other in this narrative that is really inspiring. There are no antagonists in this film. Will is struggling with himself – yet he has a supportive community surrounding him. The movie is intelligently made – and it avoids sentimentality.
Gus Van Sant directed “Good Will Hunting.” When Robin Williams accepted the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing the therapist, he mentioned that Van Zandt’s directing was so subtle he was “almost subliminal.” Van Sant champions marginalized characters in his films (“Drugstore Cowboy,” “Milk”) – and the sensitivity that he brings to Will – a victim of child abuse – is evident.
There’s one particular moment that is truly unforgettable in “Good Will Hunting.” It’s a moment of reassurance and empathy that we could all use just about now. The therapist reassures Will, “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.”
“The little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. That’s what made her my wife. Oh, and she had the goods on me, too, she knew all my little peccadillos. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not, aw, that’s the good stuff.”
Love,
Roger
Available on Hulu, Showtime and to rent on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and Google Play.
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgård
126 minutes
About Director Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician and author who has earned acclaim as both an independent and more mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality; as such, Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement.
Van Sant’s early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. He made his feature-length cinematic directorial debut with Mala Noche (1985). His second feature Drugstore Cowboy (1989) was highly acclaimed – earning Van Sant multiply screenwriting awards and a Best Director Award from the National Society of Film Critics. His following film My Own Private Idaho (1991) was similarly praised, as was the black comedy To Die For (1995), the drama Good Will Hunting (1997) and the biopic Milk (2008); for the latter two, Van Sant was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and both films received Best Picture nominations.
In 2003, Elephant – Van Sant’s film about the Columbine High School massacre – won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Van Sant also received the festival’s Best Director Award, making him one of only two filmmakers – the other being Joel Coen – to win both accolades in the same year. In addition to directing, Van Sant wrote the screenplays for several of his earlier works, and is the author of a novel entitled Pink. A book of his photography, called 108 Portraits, has also been published, and he has released two musical albums. Most recently, Van Sant directed Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018), a biopic on the quadriplegic artist John Callahan, who was known for his controversial cartoons. (peoplepill.com)
School Project
Damon told Boston Magazine in 2013 that he began writing “Good Will Hunting” for a playwriting class he was taking at Harvard University. After the course ended, he asked his childhood friend Affleck to help him flesh out the story. “We came up with this idea of the brilliant kid and his townie friends, where he was special and the government wanted to get their mitts on him. And it had a very ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ ‘Midnight Run’ sensibility, where the kids from Boston were giving the NSA the slip all the time,” Affleck told the magazine. “We would improvise and drink like six or 12 beers or whatever and record it with a tape recorder. At the time we imagined the professor and the shrink would be Morgan Freeman and [Robert] De Niro, so we’d do our imitations of Freeman and De Niro. It was kind of hopelessly naive and probably really embarrassing in that respect.” Damon said that the only scene that survived from his initial draft was the one in which his character, a math genius, meets his psychologist, played by Williams.
Ultimately, they dropped the NSA story after Rob Reiner, whose company Castle Rock originally bought the film, told Damon and Affleck that the film needed more focus. “It was a complete overhaul,” Affleck said. (abcnews.com)
Classmates
To direct Good Will Hunting, Van Sant used his classmates and personal experiences at the Rhode Island School of Design as a point reference for the scenes depicting M.I.T. and Harvard. The students at the world¬class art school were gifted, high strung and (usually) disturbed in some way, recalls Van Sant. “Although film is a completely different area, a lot of the classes at the School of Design were very technical, involving math. Most of the students in my school were in different states of being very advanced in their field. A lot of them had back stories similar to the characters that we have in the film. My school had the same kind of vibes, intensity and level of study. So I just applied that to this particular screenplay.” (cinemareview.com)
Terrence Malick for the Win
The reclusive director of Badlands and Days of Heaven (he was a year away from making The Thin Red Line) happened to be good friends with an Affleck family friend, so Ben and Matt arranged a meeting with him. Over dinner, they told him the plot of the movie, which at that point ended with Damon’s and Minnie Driver’s characters leaving town together. “In the middle of the dinner, he said, ‘I think it would be better if she left and he went after her,’” Damon recalled. “And Ben and I looked at each other. It was one of those things where you go: of course that’s better … He started talking about Antonioni. ‘In Italian movies a guy just leaves town at the end and that’s enough.’ And we said of course that’s enough.” (abcnews.com)