Good Will Hunting's Best Moments Come From How It Drums Up Pathos And Robin Williams

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are regular fixtures of American cinema now, but twenty-one years ago, they were lesser-known individuals who first leaped onto people's radars with the highly acclaimed Good Will Hunting, easily the most financially successful movie Gus Van Sant has ever had in his nearly thirty years of directing feature films. The two got to write and star in this project which ended up scoring them both a Best Original Screenplay Oscar when they were just in their mid-20's. That's all mighty impressive, but massive box office and major Oscar wins do not a great movie make (right A Beautiful Mind?), but thankfully, Good Will Hunting is still a fine motion picture even when separated from all those pieces of hype.


The Will Hunting of the title is portrayed by Matt Damon and works as a janitor at MIT, where he anonymously solves extremely difficult math problems that indicate to Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) is an intellectual savant. Lambeau wants to give Hunting, a guy who never had a family to call his own beyond his close friends, a chance to really use his intellect, but it turns out Hunting has an extensive criminal past that includes a recent arrest that makes such a prospect a difficult one to pull off. In order to get out of jail time, Hunting is required to visit with a therapist for a prolonged period of time, with said therapist being a former classmate of Lambeau, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams).

In his time spent with Maguire, it's made clear that Will Hunting refuses to let anyone else near him lest he experience pain similar the one he feels towards his parents for leaving him at a young age. The biggest surprise for me in watching Good Will Hunting for the first time was seeing how a movie that frequently goes for broad touches (sometimes to success, other times to more mixed results), there is a surprising level of complexity handled in depicting the long-term psychological angst that Hunting carries that keeps him from connecting with other people. Early scenes showing him refusing to cooperate with Maguire made me worried we were headed for an unrealistically easy exploration of coping with this kind of psychological disposition, but instead, Hunting is constantly going backwards just as he's previously gone forward a few steps. He's not just going in a straight line towards progress from his starting point of being emotionally damaged.

So much of the success of these scenes comes down to Robin Williams, who delivers one of his numerous top-shelf dramatic performances here as a soft-spoken but wise therapist. Director Gus Van Sant seems to realize that Williams on his own is enough to get the audience all choked up, thus explaining why a number of his pivotal monologues are delivered in single takes without any other elements (even Danny Elfman's score goes silent) to distract from how much life experience Williams is able to subtly convey in his speeches to this troubled kid. Williams, in his brilliantly realized performance, creates a compelling backbone for the friendship that forms between Hunting and Maguire, one that allows some outstandingly touching scenes to emerge, including the famous "It's Not Your Fault" sequence that has Williams getting so much emotional power out of repeating one phrase.

The rest of Good Will Hunting runs the gamut from the routine to the surprisingly well-done, with the former level of quality being found in some contrived pieces of conflict (Lambeau only exists in the third act to drum up random tension) and a romance formed between Hunting and Harvard student Skylar (Minnie Driver) that leaves Skylar as the quintessential romantic object rather than a person, a flaw that really sticks out in a movie all about exploring the complexities of ordinary people. On the other hand, Ben Affleck (playing the one member of Hunting's group of buddies that leaves an impression) is surprisingly effective in his performance, especially in a pivotal scene where his character tells Hunting to actually use his gifts to find himself a better life.  It is in these down-to-Earth moments of emotional potency that one can understand why Good Will Hunting became such a pop culture force to be reckoned with in its initial release.