by Nathan David Black

Will Hunting (MATT DAMON) is a troubled 20 year old who lives in a rough-edged area of Boston and is employed as a janitor at MIT. He is a genius with a photographic memory, and the reasoning ability to take what he reads and sees and develop theories and formulas from that memory. On the other hand, he is totally out of control when it comes to dealing with most people (other then the friends that are from his neighborhood).

MIT Mathematics Professor Lambeau (STELLAN SKARSGÅRD) discovers Will's brilliance one day as Will's scribblings on a blackboard reveal the answer to a problem meant for his students to figure out (a problem that took the staff 2 years to solve). When Lambeau finally tracks Will down, he is in jail for assault and battery; Lambeau then makes a deal with the judge in Will's case to release him to Lambeau's custody. The deal is that Will must work with Lambeau on mathematics and go into psychiatric therapy once a week.

Working together with Will on mathematical formulas is the easy part for Lambeau. Finding a therapist that will deal with Will is another matter entirely. Will rips apart every therapist that Lambeau sends him to, for several weeks, by using his intellect to take each psychologist's specialized method of treatment and either turn it against them or to ridicule them to the point that they have no desire to counsel him. Lambeau finally has to call on the skill of his estranged college roommate, Sean McGuire (ROBIN WILLIAMS) and convince McGuire to take on the task of treating Will.

The characters are developed slowly as the film progresses, Will Hunting and Sean McGuire being the standouts. At first, Will is basically a street punk. As events progress, Will's defenses begin to periodically short circuit and one begins to see him as he truly is: a young man with no direction and a fear of taking on anything outside of his own world. The person who is the key to Will's self-discovery is Sean, a man who is also hiding from the world in his own way.

From the opening to closing of credits, the harmonics of Good Will Hunting are interesting. The music is melodic and complimentary to the production on a whole. Visually pleasant to watch, yet with a jagged knife edge at times. Things move at a steady pace for the duration of the story and the dialogue is raw yet has a natural flow. Much of this is due to the direction of Gus Van Sant Jr. (My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Drugstore Cowboy, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues) and the writers of the screenplay (BEN AFFLECK & MATT DAMON).

Hunting Will

by Jenifer Blue

I was skeptical. My sight fluttered upon photographs of aesthetically-affable Ben Affleck and well-chiseled Matt Damon and I cynically assumed that their film endeavor, Good Will Hunting, was a self-indulgent attempt at artistic affectation. My assumption was incorrect; my cynicism, unrequited, wilted.

It is dangerously easy to lose our selves. Self-loss is fad'ish in American society; we are either absorbed in the maniacal activity of our exteriors or we are obsessed with our internal and/or physical imperfections. External diversions multiply at a rabid rate, abounding like creamy lather beckoning for our individual plunges of participation. Existence in modern culture has become more crowded and cacophonous; for many, the sanctity of home does not even offer respite from the deluge of titillating and/or tumultuous stimuli. We are confronted, bombarded, and caressed with attention-getting tantalization while engaged in our daily mundane maneuverings and also while reacting to a surround-sound'ish momentum of high-strung media mania. Technological advances, especially in communication, have brought the world closer in a claustrophobic embrace. Hype is harrowing in its momentum; no wonder we protect ourselves to mega-fortressing degrees. Vulnerability renders us open to forces that seem intent on consuming us, the consumers. Perhaps we are arriving at a state of sophisticated, psychic barbarism wherein we are eating each other alive. So we protect ourselves, and the more numb and impenetrable we become to the forces, the more outrageous the forces become in their provocative schemes.

The prospect of addressing the true nature of our individual interior landscapes has become even more of a wicked trick in the United States because of the personal purge-fest trend that became so fashionable approximately 14 years ago. Gruesome, gaudy, and tawdry exposé's of private-world abuse became perpetuating public-image exploits, the confessors cashing in via television, radio, bookstores, and courtrooms inflating with shifty lawsuits.

My personal theory is that the Burning Bed, a television docudrama featuring a nervy performance by previously angelic Farrah Fawcett as an abused woman who ultimately lights her demonic husband on fire, was the red flag waving in a trend of flaunting, viscera-wrenching catharses. Consequently, publicly strewn enterprises of autobiographical tortures gradually became more explicit, eliciting much mouth-gaping, gasping, endearment, and applause. Sacred interior landscapes shapeshifted into public-image affectations while much of the populace became addicted to being addicted in a virile-to-be-victimized ambiance.

Television shows such as COPS and the 11:00 nightly news are a welcome intrusion into the lives of people with bad hair and vacant vocabularies who display dirt and diatribe for an audience. What is our own contribution in this quest to be seen in order to feel/be real? This is a most cruel, unusual, and eerie conundrum; how are we to differentiate our masks from our truth if a shard of private, inner reality is consequently projected for public identity attention? The intricacies of this querulous quandary are most cunningly and successfully addressed in Good Will Hunting; I sense a breakthrough in collective attitudes if films are a cultural mirror reflecting the trends of society.

Director Gus Van Sant's (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For) knack for subtle inside-outing of characters accentuates the unpeeling nature of the script (penned by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon). The private terrain of the protagonist, Will Hunting, remains predominantly covert throughout most of the film. There are no dramatic flashbacks rebounding off the psyches of the audience; there are no gratuitously disjointed scenes displaying extraordinarily stimulating pathos. Will Hunting presents himself to the world of his story and to the audience watching the story as a tightly contained individual, one absorbed in the art of self-preservation. My voyeuristic jollies were teased and taunted with subtleties, imagery, and symbols that woo'd my wonder and incited my lips to smack in anticipation.

A debate between intellectual and experiential wisdom is presented within the finely tuned, deepening layers of Will Hunting's life. Will has a photographic memory accessorized with an innate genius for mathematical formulation. His natural predilection is intellect yet he lives in south Boston which is presented as a squalid environment where inhabitants need to rely more on empirical and intuitive wit than sophisticated intellectual stealth. Will's personal history is slowly revealed as wretched; his pain and coping mechanisms are intellectually acknowledged yet not emotionally redeemed within him.

Danny Elfman composed the soundtrack; the music felt like a strong consideration in evoking the creeping pace of a seemingly carefree and cocksure young man who is becoming undone. As one is introduced into the world of Good Will Hunting, the music elicits a pleasantly trite feeling as credits roll over kaleidoscope'ing images. As the credits are finishing, the music subtly tilts, murmuring a whisper of lop-sided dynamics.

When I look up the term will in my mildewing Doubleday Dictionary, the following descriptions are included: 1) The power to make conscious, deliberate choices or to control what one does. 2) The act or experience of exercising this power. 3) A specific desire, purpose, choice, etc.: the will of the people. 4) Strong determination or purpose: the will to succeed. 5) Self-control. These are intellectually conjured descriptions of what will could mean in an analogous sort of way. However, what does will feel like? The sensation would vary from person to person as it tends to be an individualized force of motivation that is also impacted with patterns of influence from both upbringing and immersion in society.

As will includes the freedom of choosing how we exert this verve of power, there is good will and bad will; the choices we make can often be influenced by insidious, unrecognized, and not fully experienced patterns of external influences. Will Hunting is initially painted into this corner of projecting perfection, however the ruse he has consciously or unconsciously chosen no longer works magic in this film as he is left frustrated as a result of not chancing the release of control.

The risk of consciously exerting the will toward an unfamiliar, unknown direction is hazardous yet critically necessary in order to shed the personal limitations that blockade highly personalized and individualistic fulfillment and growth. The characters in Good Will Hunting have experienced and intellectualized comedy and tragedy while exerting their wills and also reacting to the wills of others, to the Hand of Madame Fate.

As an audience, we are not entirely sure what the affect of Will Hunting's final cause within the spectrum of the story will be. Thus we have a film where the trip is more accentuated than the immediate gratification of a destination or result. Will Hunting's interior life becomes larger and more luminous than the pretense of Will Hunting's public-image both within the story and on the screen in front of an audience.

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