Good Will Hunting (1997)
Empire 500 (2008): #433
Director: Gus Van Sant
Screenwriters: Ben Affleck & Matt Damon (Oscar Winners)
Good Will Hunting is a film about friendship, loyalty, genius
and figuring out who you want to be. It aims to move, and it does. Starring and
written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, it is easy to forget they were not the
major Hollywood stars of present and the gamble it must have taken for them to
be cast in the lead roles by a studio. Both give fantastic performances, as the
struggling genius and his most loyal friend, but the cast is extremely strong
all around. Robin Williams (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) as the psychiatrist provides the emotional heart of
the film and gives it depth, while Stellan Skarsgård, as the college professor
that pulls Will Hunting out of his slump. Both provide some fantastic moments of
drama and their broken relationship also serves as an interesting subplot,
while Minnie Driver as Skylar is Will’s emotional core and is the synthesis of
his past and present and his wants and needs, having fun with Will’s buddies and
also being rich enough to be able to pay for her own college education.
Crucially, all the characters feel ‘real’, and flawed but relatable, and there
is no standard villain, just Will Hunting battling with his own ethics and conscience
and attempting to avoid being shaped by those around him.
In that respect, Good Will Hunting feels very similar to
Boyhood. Growing up, Mason is struggling to work out who and what he wants to
be, while avoiding the attempts of others to shape him into a projection of themselves,
and a similar theme runs through Good Will Hunting through the power struggle
of Lambeau (Skarsgård) who is absolutely determined that Will seizes his
potential for the sake of his own ego, and Maguire (Williams) who Will shares a
background and upbringing with and sees him as projection of himself. This
conflict proves to be the core part of the film, and (spoiler alert) in the
ending in which Will drives off to California to try and reconcile with Skylar
shows he has uprooted himself and moved on from his past, while simultaneously
refusing to be shaped or changed by anyone else but himself, as he drives off
into the distance for his own personal reasons, which have nothing to do with
Lambeau or Maguire.
It would have been so easy for this film to have become
overly dramatic or overblown and to have been a clichéd mess, but the
performances, the directing and the screenplay all manage to avoid this, and
pull it together to equal something emotional, profound and greater than the
sum of its parts. The standout scene is suitably enough between the two
screenwriters, Damon and Affleck as Affleck tells Will how lucky he is to have
his ability, encouraging him to embrace his future, acting as the turning
point for Will’s emotional state, and releasing all the emotion that has been
steadily and masterfully built up in the audience. A lovely film
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