Good Will Hunting
Directed by Gus Van Sant, Jr. Starring Matt Damon (Will Hunting), Robin Williams (Sean McGuire), Ben Affleck (Chuckie), Minnie Driver (Skylar)
A film review by Chris Loar Copyright 1998 Chris Loar
Gus Van Sant is known for his quirky, bold, experimental features. This film is a break with that tradition; what we've got in _Good Will Hunting_ is a much slicker, more commercially viable film than I've seen from him before. In fact, he's made a film that could easily have been hackneyed, we've seen it so many times -- the rebellious youth tamed by his respect for an older, experienced man. Filmgoers hoping for the verve and originality of _Drugstore Cowboy_ or My Own Private Idaho_ will likely be disappointed. But Van Sant proves with this picture that he can do something more mainstream and palatable with not just competence, but with a certain level of energy and enthusiasm. We have certainly seen this story before, but it's been a while since we've seen it told this well.
Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a walking contradiction. A young tough guy from the wrong side of Boston, he spends his days roaming the streets with his buddies, looking for trouble. His nights, though, are spent reading history and philosophy, and taking time out from his job as a janitor at MIT to solve math problems that baffle Nobel Laureates. Will is a math genius with an eidetic memory; he is also an angry young man who is on his way to a prison term when he is discovered by a Lambeau, a brilliant mathematician (played passably by Stellan Skarsgard), who secures Will's release, on the condition that the two of them work together -- and that Will agrees to see a therapist.
This last point is tricky, since Will is uncooperative, defensive, and too smart for his own good, and runs circles around every therapist he's sent to until he winds up in the hands of Lambeau's old college roommate, Sean McGuire. Sean is a brilliant burnout, a Harvard grad who teaches at a community college and mourns the loss of his dead wife. And, at this point, the therapy starts to go somewhere -- for Sean is from South Boston himself, and understands that the only way to make any progress with Will is to win his trust. Williams gives one of the best performances of his career here, as we watch him teach Will how to approach his life, even as he himself starts to awaken to his own failures and what he needs to do about them.
These scenes with Will and Sean are often simply riveting, and they alone would provide a perfectly good reason to see the picture. Williams and Damon are great foils for each other; they bring two very different sorts of energy to these scenes. Damon, while not delivering the film's best performance, has a way of bringing out the finest in his co-stars; Williams flags a bit when Damon's not onscreen, while Minnie Driver (playing Syklar, Will's love interest) and Ben Affleck (as Chuckie, Will's best friend) really shine when they're playing off Damon.
The film has difficulty holding itself together at times; Affleck and Damon's script just doesn't have room to tell us everything we'd like to know about the major characters; Driver's and Affleck's characters would come off as rather cardboard were the actors not so skilled at painting character in a few deft brushstrokes. And the film hardly compares to Van Sant's best work; the direction and writing, while more than competent, are hardly making us take a fresh look at what cinema can do.
Taken on its own, however, the film is engrossing and, at times, startlingly moving. And it does something that most films of this troubled-youth genre don't do: it emphasizes that the most important thing a person can do is learn to think and feel independently. Too many stories ask us to believe that rebellious youth should learn to play by the rules; this one tells us that we should all be rebels -- but need to learn how to break only those rules that lie between us and what we want. Damon, Affleck, and Van Sant are telling us that the cure for the rebel without a cause is not to stop rebelling; it's to teach that rebel what a cause is, and let them find it themselves.
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