genuine geniuses don't mop floors

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2001)

By definition, most of us are fairly ordinary, but we seem to expect that people with marked ability should make the most of it. To use the biblical phrase, hiding one's talent under a bushell ( a brand of tea here in Australia) is a sin. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, better known as actors, put together the screenplay here which has to be regarded as a promising first attempt (they did get an Academy Award for it), but which is still rather uneven. There is some good dialogue and some very trite stuff, the characters do not surprise or even develop much and the story is reliant on coincidence.
Will Hunting (Matt Damon), from working class South Boston, is a 20 year old janitor at MIT, who happens to have mathematical ability exceeding that of the professors, not to mention a photographic memory and a firm grasp of Western history and philosophy. Something of a coincidence? Strangely, he remains undiscovered until he is spotted by a professor solving on a blackboard a difficult problem set for students. Will has an attitude and a liking for thumping people (acquired it seems in his disturbed childhood) and is about to go to jail, but the prof intervenes and Will is let out on a bond provided he learns some maths and sees a counsellor. After a couple of false starts (to emphasise just what a difficult little b'stard Will is), Robin Williams hoves into view as the counsellor, Maguire. The rest of the story concerns Dr Maguire's attempts to help Will sort out his problems, which become more complicated when he become involved with English medical student Minnie Driver (called Skylab or something).
Both Matt Damon (nearly B A Harvard) and Ben Affleck (his childhood friend in Cambridge, Mass.) have middle class backgrounds and it was no doubt a bit of a challenge for them to write a script about someone like Will. It would have been very interesting if someone really from a poor Boston background like Mark Wahlberg had done it. Will is sensitively realised and we see that it is difficult for someone with his fractured upbringing to have much self-worth. Yet no-one with a brain like his lacks an ego and I couldn't help thinking he wouldn't need Robin Williams to discover it for him.

I thought the most intriguing character in the film was Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard), the MIT maths professor who discovers Will. Even though Lambeau has won the maths equivalent of the Nobel Prize, Will can still out-prove him, if that's the word. He is jealous, but he also is determined that Will succeed. He needs to believe Will is like him in that he must be pushed to succeed. Then Lambeau can tell himself if he had been pushed even harder he might have reached Will's level. At least then he will get some of the credit.
I had Gus Van Sant down as a rather odd-ball director with a gay sensibility (`My Own Private Idaho', `Even Cowgirls Get the Blues') though he got a bit more mainsteam in `The Rainmaker' (also with Matt Damon). This is a very nice ordinary quiet mainstream picture with a few good moments. Van Sant has since revisited the topic of nurturing genius (literary this time) in `Forrester'. This earlier effort is more effective because the Will character is a kind of Mozart of math, with God-given ability, and it's hard not to root for him, whereas the protagonist in `Forrester' is a cultural product, albeit black and from the slums. With his beefy glower, Matt Damon looks right and projects Will's hostility well while Robin Williams turns down the volume and puts in a restrained, almost elegant performance. You could rent worse for a quiet, cerebral, Friday night.