Good Will Hunting - a MATThematical marvel

I'm really not much of a writer; probably had maybe two or three good narratives that I came up with in on my own, throughout my life. That's not for a lack of effort because I love stories just a bit more than everyone else, so I definitely tried. I'm more inclined to attribute it to the difficulty of the writing process. The journey to crafting a written piece is mired by quite a few different aspects not least of which are thematic significance, structural coherence of the plot, the characters themselves (and that's just the foundation of creative writing, if I ignore the whole linguistics and language conundrum). I'm no Chomsky, Foster-Wallace, Tolkien, or Sorkin (4 names were chosen after immense deliberation, I promise. Some honorary mentions include Nietzsche and Orwell), so I won't pretend to be an expert on writing.

However, after spending what should be 78.35% of my life knee-deep in written and visual narrative content, I think I can extrapolate my inexplicable mental ramblings into some version of critical analysis. But even then, I'll fail to encapsulate just how beautiful Good Will Hunting really is. One of the most genuine, earnest, sensitive, moving, vulnerable (too many adjectives which still fail to convey my point, thereby verifying the point) pieces of dramatic work ever created is maybe just one of a billion different ways I would characterise Good Will Hunting.

Matt Damon, say 20 something, was in a playwriting class at Harvard in the really early 90s. 'Final assignment?; no problem, I'll just write a play in my spare time', he must have thought to himself. Instead, he wrote 40 pages of preliminary text for what would go on to be this film. At bloody 20. As I say very often these days, "IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME".

Paging for the genius janitor to do my homework

Collaborating with Ben Affleck, the script and its screenplay were ready in full form by 1994 and like most pet projects of independent young actors, was immediately discarded by most major studios. Now, a certain he-who-will-never-be-named of Miramax picked it up and decided to make it. Luckily, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were up for the challenge.

The premise of Good Will Hunting is essentially almost too 90s indie-drama to be true which I guess is a byproduct of becoming the archetype by which one defines films from the 1990s Hollywood scene, home of Before Sunrise, Fargo and a personal favourite, You've Got Mail: home-grown Boston orphan with a very thick accent, abusive childhood, and genius intellect tries to figure out life amidst dealing with his immense potential, friends, one (*cough*) special friend and mentor with the help of his equally damaged therapist, an all-around wonderful human being. Will Hunting is a charming, evasive, wallflower-type math prodigy who spends late nights at bars and early mornings in jail, and the rest of the time at MIT as a janitor secretly solving unsolvable math problems. But Will Hunting is guarded, defensive and combative in equal measure: he's afraid to strive for more than what he has, even though he's deservedly capable of it.

At first glance, I felt the film sounded intriguing but not particularly special albeit I was aware of its critical reception which may have coloured my opinion. At 14, intriguing was enough so I spent 2 good hours on a weekend afternoon. I've seen it thrice since and I've laughed at every joke, dropped a jaw for every monologue, and smiled excessively at the end each time. Matt Damon as the titular protagonist probably wrote the part for himself but that does not change the fact that I think he's brilliant and authentic in this movie, which probably comes second on his lift of top performances (to the Ocean's trilogy; Jason Bourne for third, Invictus at four and The Martian at 5).

Will Hunting is flawed quite evidently, arrogant and precocious with a sprinkling of nonchalance, and while most stories deal with flawed protagonists overcoming these Achilles heels, few rarely make these flaws an endearing aspect of the character. Perhaps that's the Boston charm or maybe it's the anti-establishment combined with intelligence that makes the audience root for him (like a Holmes or Greg House). Will Hunting is resistant to change and intent upon living life on his own terms and though almost everyone has given up on him, one character hasn't. And in comes the MVP, Robin Williams.

Top tier putdown of ponytail douche

Robin Williams was one of the most brilliant funny-people in the universe, just ask Mork. But his dramatic roles often get overshadowed. Not many people know he was in Julliard for an advanced theater program alongside Christopher Reeves. Not many people also know that his teachers advised him to drop out because there was nothing they could teach him he already didn't know, after a play performance of The Night of the Iguana. In films such as Patch Adams, Mrs Doubtfire and Jumanji, we see the human dynamo that is Robin Williams. But in Insomnia, Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting, we see only the character that bears a passing resemblance to that great comedian because in each of these roles and more, Robin Williams merely exists as a title in the credits.

In Good Will Hunting, he plays Dr. Sean Maguire, a widowed community college professor teaching psychology who decides to take upon the task of counselling Will Hunting. Sullen and frustrated at first, he realises the value of not Will Hunting, the genius or the friend, but the human being. And I could probably write a lot more about a lot else in this movie like the soundtrack, the best bar scene of all time, and the supporting cast of an excellently adorable Minnie Driver and just Ben and Casey Affleck being Ben and Casey Affleck. But I'll end this one with a short note on two brilliant Robin-led scenes in the movie.

The first is the Boston Public Garden bench scene. I said to a friend earlier today, that if I ever wrote something half as tender and meaningful as that scene, my life would be totally worth it. After a tense first session, Sean decides to meet Will again to tell him something important that we all need to hear sometime, somewhere and from someone who really means it: that it's okay to be insecure and scared because that's all that life is; dying is easy, living is hard. An anatomical post-mortem of this scene would devolve into the symbolic significance of a setting Boston afternoon in the autumn as orange leaves twiddle to the ground and swans drift past our two protagonists. An anatomical post-mortem of this scene would analyse how Will has almost little to no dialogue in this scene and how the conversation soon becomes an honest monologue of the human experience. And an especially good anatomical post-mortem of this scene will recognise that Will's choice of metamorphosis coincides with the seasonal change of the environment. But all I'll tell you is that the bench they sat on became a memorial for Williams' after his passing. Because if anything needs to be summarised, that's the impact this scene has on audiences.

The Bench scene

The second is the first real therapy session scene and another Robin monologue. Now, I won't spoil the punchline but the story goes that the scene was actually improvised, which supposedly explains why the camera on the extreme close-up is visibly bobbing up and down because the cameraman couldn't stop laughing. Every frame is endearing and wholesome and absolutely fitting to the film and its energy. I'd give everything just to watch it again and laugh as I did the first time, but luckily I don't have to because I still laugh just as much regardless.

Robin Williams went on to win an Oscar for his role and so did Damon and Affleck for original screenplay. And while there is much more to be said about this film and its virtues and how it deservingly demands an audience, (*slides down imaginary tickets across imaginary table*), "I gotta go see about a girl".