Jan 01 2009
Good Will Hunting: Simple, yet Profound
Good Will Hunting is one of those movies that make your life beautiful…where you feel blessed to know that simple characters can touch you deep and stay with you for a long time. You feel like watching them again and again and again.
I saw Matt Damon’s interview in ITAS. In that interview, when talking about “Good Will Hunting”, he said that he wrote some three hundred pages to come up with this script. Being in writing myself, I know how tough it is to come up with those numbers of pages, and especially when you are creating a story.
Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the screenplay and the movie is directed by Gustav Van Sant. Movie won two Oscars, and both were extremely well deserved; Matt and Ben for screenplay writing and Robin Williams for supporting role. The nomination for the best movie was lost to Titanic.
It is awesome when you have movies that have just 4-5 characters, no guns, no revenge, no special effects, no action, just simple life; simple life with simple characters and simple problems.
Matt Damon plays Will who is lonely, orphan and lost. But he is not just that …he also is a mathematics genius. He works as a cleaner at the university and solves the math problems written on the board for the students to solve. Professor Lambeau discovers this and gets in touch with him. Meanwhile, Will gets into a fight and gets imprisoned. Professor takes the permission of the judge to get him out on probation on a condition of getting Will into counseling and improve his behavior. Will agrees with that but the attempt to get him to talk to the counselors fail. There remains only one option with Lambeau and that is to get a help from an old classmate Sean, who is a professor of psychology at the college.
Sean, played by Robin Williams, is one who believes in trust and patience rather than hurrying someone into a change. He takes the responsibility of helping Will out of his troubled life. This leads to a relationship with its ups and downs and a new life for Will.
Robin is a man with no hassles. Authentic and genuine to the core with no alternate intentions, he encourages Will to identify with the self rather than identifying himself with his genius mind. Will slowly starts opening and his emotionally muddled life gets an outlet. He gets into a relationship with a girl (played by Minnie driver) and this time rather than destroying it, he decides to save it. That’s how the movie ends. Or should I say a beautiful movie ends.
Every scene in Good Will Hunting has a special touch. Scenes of finds hanging together, Lambeau’s restless attempts to get Will on a right track and the counseling sessions with Sean; all the scenes are shot with great care and simplicity. And that is the best thing about a movie, its simplicity. A scene where Sean and Will are sitting at the lake and Sean kind of bares the real Will, is worth watching. For the first time in his life Will listens without having any word to say. The truth hits him so hard that he simply remains silent. And watch a controlled and effortless way Robin has acted there. Simply awesome.
There are some movies that remain with you for weeks. And there are others, that do not have a time span. They just become part of you. Good Will Hunting is one of those movies.
