This is a movie about one Will Hunting (Matt Damon), a young man with a not
pretty past. Orphaned early he became a ward of the state, and suffered all
the emotional and physical abuse about which we hear so much. Will has a serious problem with authority figures, impulse control, and judgment. Given his history he develops into a young man who is incapable of interacting on any interpersonal level. His focus on life is keeping everyone within the sphere of his acquaintance as far away from his soul as he can possibly keep them, as there is a great deal of security in anonymity. His greatest asset in maintaining this distance is his superior intellect. You see Will is a genius who's abilities cannot even be scaled. He has a photographic memory, with the ability to not just regurgitate, but to abstract from multiple sources of information stored in that frighteningly expansive mind. There will only be three people in this film that Will opens to. Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Will's best friend and probably the only person who knows, but never addresses, the demons that drive Will's self-destructive behavior. Sean (Robin Williams), the only therapist in a long line of attempts, who has the moxie to break through. Lastly, there is Skylar, a beautiful, wealthy, and sincerely grounded woman in pre-med at Harvard.
All others, especially those who believe they have some sort of superior position to Will, are going to be summarily destroyed. Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) gets the worst of Will's superior intellect. Lambeau is the award winning mathematician who discovers Will solving theorems that are still befuddling Nobel Prize winning mathematicians. He manages to get Will probation for an assault charge that was definitely going to send him to jail. Parole contingent upon Will meeting once a week with him and once a week with a therapist. He is obsessed with Will becoming the great discovery of his award winning career. Will, however, will no longer be taken advantage of, and he slowly, emotionally destroys Lambeau.
It is Chuckie who seems to ground Will. He is the only one who never seems to end up on the razor's edge of Will's superior intellect. It is also Chuckie who frees Will of his obsessive need to maintain the security of his status quo; South Boston, construction work, the same clubs every night, and the same safe circle of buddies. In a wonderful scene between Chuckie and Will, while they are leaving a construction sight, Chuckie lets Will know that what Will does with his future effects him more than it effects Will. He lets Will know that if he is still in South Boston in twenty years then everything that Chuckie believed in will be a lie. He needs to believe in Will, and that there are those who can make it out of the mire. That's the purpose of Will in Chuckie's life. The scene is actually much more moving than described here.
Sean McGuire is the therapist brought in to treat Will during his parole. Sean is a man of many sadness'. He apparently gave up a very promising academic career, a regret. He married, was happy and then lost his wife to cancer. He was a Viet Nam vet, which apparently deeply effected him. He breaks though to Will by allowing for Will's defenses. He takes Will's attacks on him and analyses them, coming to the conclusion that Will is brilliant, but nothing more than a pup. He lets him know that all the knowledge he can spew is no substitute for life, and the living of it. He confronts Will aggressively, and he won't walk away as all the others have. The scenes between Will and Sean were my Kleenex scenes.
Lastly, we have Skylar. Skylar is English, moneyed, intelligent, and very open. Will meets her in a bar near Harvard. As Chuckie is trying to pick-up Skylar, he gets in a little too deep, raising the ire of one particular Harvard snob who is also on the prowl for Skylar. He begins boxing Chuckie in about his having said he's a Harvard man, pissing Skylar off in the process. At the point where Chuckie is going to have to pummel the guy, or walk away, Will steps in and uses his superior knowledge of history, economics, and psychology to decimate the arrogant toad. Skylar was very impressed and waited for Will to return, which, of course, he didn't. She leaves him her number, which surprisingly he uses. The relationship between these two people is intimate, touching. But Skylar is going on to med school at Princeton.
The movie is wonderfully well written by, I was shocked to find out, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The plot flows well, but the dialogue is the truly impressive part. Lambeau's dialogue is pompous and pedantic, much like a number of self-important professors I've had the misfortune to experience. Sean's dialogue is that of a well-educated blue-collar South Boston Boy. He can hold his own with his old friend and rival Lambeau, but he's in his element when he's with Will. Chuckie is South Boston blue-collar all the way, "F**k" being the most used word in that particular dialect. Skylar is open, asking the questions that she wants the answers to, saying what she wants Will to know, and exposing herself with raw emotion. It is the authenticity of the dialogue that makes these sometimes touching, sometimes painful scenes work.
This is a movie that should be seen.
