Good Will Hunting

Plot synopsis:
Though Will Hunting (Matt Damon) has genius-level intelligence (such as a talent for memorizing facts and an intuitive ability to prove sophisticated mathematical theorems), he works as a janitor at MIT and lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in an impoverished South Boston neighborhood. An abused foster child, he subconsciously blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. Hence, he is unable to maintain either a steady job or a steady romantic relationship.The first week of classes, Will solves a difficult graduate-level math problem that Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), a Fields Medalist and combinatorialist, left on a chalkboard as a challenge to his students, hoping someone might solve it by the semester's end. Everyone wonders who solved it, and Lambeau puts another problem on the board -- one that took him and his colleagues two years to prove. Will is discovered in the act of solving it, and Lambeau initially believes that Will is vandalizing the board and chases him away as Will insults him. When Will turns out to have solved it correctly, Lambeau tries to track Will down.Meanwhile, Will attacks a youth who had bullied him years before in kindergarten, and he now faces imprisonment after hitting a police officer who was responding to the fight. Realizing Will might have the potential to be a great mathematician, such as the genius Évariste Galois, Lambeau goes to Will's trial and intervenes on his behalf, offering him a choice: either Will can go to jail, or he can be released into Lambeau's personal supervision, where he must study mathematics and see a psychotherapist to help him with his anger and defensive personality. Will chooses the latter even though he seems to believe that he does not need therapy.Five psychologists fail to connect with Will. Out of sheer desperation, Lambeau finally calls on Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), an estranged old friend and MIT classmate of his. Sean differs from his five predecessors in that he is also from South Boston and pushes back at Will and is eventually able to get through to him and his hostile, sarcastic defense mechanisms. At one point, Will analyzes a watercolor painting that Sean had done himself and concludes that it reflects Sean's suppressed feelings and guilt over the premature death of his wife. Sean becomes offended and hostile and grabs Will by the throat, threatening to sink his chances for reform, at which point Will ends the appointment and walks out; Lambeau walks in believing that Will has ruined his chances with yet another therapist. However, Sean sees Will as a challenge and tells Lambeau to bring him back each week.In a later session, Will is particularly struck when Sean tells him how he gave up his ticket to see the Red Sox in the 1975 World Series (missing Carlton "Pudge" Fisk's famous home run in the Sox infamous "Game 6") in order to meet and spend time with a stranger in a bar, who would later become his wife. Will is encouraged to try to establish a relationship with Skylar (Minnie Driver), a young woman he met at a bar near Harvard.This doctor-patient relationship, however, is far from one-sided. Will challenges Sean in the same way that Sean is encouraging Will to take a good, hard, objective look at himself and his life. Sean's own pathology is that he is unable and unwilling to even consider another romantic relationship in the aftermath of his beloved wife's premature death from cancer several years before, possibly the primary reason why Sean agrees to take Will on as a client.Meanwhile, Lambeau pushes Will so hard to excel that Will eventually refuses to go to the job interviews that Lambeau has arranged for him for positions that might prove challenging, even to his immense talents. Lambeau and Sean also squabble about Will's future. Will's accidental witnessing of this furious quarrel somehow acts as a catalyst for his decision to enter a deeper level of trust and sharing with Sean. He has apparently realized from this event that the situation is a little more complex than Will vs. The World. He now sees that these mentors are every bit as human, fallible, and conflicted as he is.Skylar asks Will to move to California with her, where she will begin medical school at Stanford. Will panics at the thought. Skylar then expresses support about his past, which is received as patronization and triggers a tantrum in which Will storms out of the dorm while in a state of undress. He shrugs off the work he's doing for Lambeau as "a joke," even though Lambeau is incapable of solving some of the theorems and admittedly envies Will. Lambeau begs Will not to throw it all away, but Will walks out on him anyway.Sean points out that Will is so adept at anticipating future failure in his personal and romantic relationships, that he either allows them to fizzle out or deliberately bails in order to avoid the risk of future emotional pain. When Will then provides a whimsical reply to Sean's very serious query of what he wants to do with his life, Sean simply shows him the door. When Will further tells his best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) that he wants to be a laborer for the rest of his life, Chuckie becomes brutally honest with Will: He believes it's an "insult" for Will to waste his potential as a laborer, and that his recurring wish is to knock on Will's door in the morning when he picks him up for work and find that he just isn't there, that he has left without saying goodbye. Chuckie's honesty hits home with Will more than anyone else's, even Sean, a trained professional.Will goes to another therapy session, where he and Sean share that they were both victims of child abuse. At first, Will is defensive and resentful at Sean's repeated reassurances that "It's not your fault," but he eventually breaks down in tearful acknowledgment. Finally, after much self-reflection, Will decides to cease being a victim of his own inner demons and to take charge of his life. When his buddies present him with a rebuilt Chevy Nova for his 21st birthday, he decides to go to California and reunite with Skylar, setting aside his lucrative corporate and government job offers.Will leaves a brief note for Sean explaining what he's doing, using one of Sean's own quips, "I had to go see about a girl." Sean also leaves to travel the world, though not before reconciling with Lambeau. The movie ends as Chuckie poignantly discovers, in fulfillment of his own long-standing wish, that Will has left for a better life. Will is then shown starting his life-affirming drive to California for a new beginning with Skylar and a leap into an unpredictable future.

Tags: psychological, cute, feel-good, flashback, humor, inspiring

Review:
Sure, Will Hunting's genius is profoundly unrealistic.Yet I'm giving this one 10 out of 10.I don't know whether Matt and Ben have ever been in therapy, but they certainly understand a lot about the human psyche, how it ducks responsibility, and pushes blame onto others, how it dismisses the real gifts it has and concentrates on running itself down.
A lot of things have been said about this fantastic movie, and I only hope to add a few more praises.The fact that it was written by Ben and Matt was a shock to me, I did not expect any strong writing and a solid script, but boy was I wrong.
The movie lasts for 2 hours, and every minute of it I couldn't even focus on anything beside the incredible world of Will Hunting.Matt plays Will Hunting, who is a brilliant young man who denies his unreal intellect.
This isn't supposed to be about genius or some "white trash" as someone else said (some people might say the kids in this movie aren't trash, just normal hard working, middle class guys) - it's about love, life and courage- courage to ante up & try again, no matter how many times life knocks us around.
While everyone took sides with L.A. Confidential (for it's Old Hollywood flair and tight-as-a-girdle plot arc) or Titanic (for it's generally inescapable, juggernaut-like aura) as the Best Picture of 1997, it seems that too many people overlook Good Will Hunting for what it was:  a timeless little opus that managed to make South Boston look romantic and happened to make Ben Affleck and Matt Damon some of the most deserving superstars in recent memory.Because before they were anybody, they were just the writers of this tale of a reluctant human being named Will Hunting, a mathematical genius who wore the guise of a hoodlum, and all of the sudden obstacles he had to take on to truly step in to manhood.
Among these obstacles were a straight-forward shrink who outright dared Will to bulls*** him (played by Robin Williams, who got his overdue Oscar for it), a brilliant M.I.T. professor who felt it his own personal redemption to put Will's mind to great use somehow (Stellan Skarsgård, who never fails to steal nearly every scene he's in), and a girl who doesn't understand why the boy she loves so much cannot love her.It was these obstacles that made Will Hunting such a complex character: while he was a genius at the definite (math), he was a bit of a moron at the indefinite (human relationships).
Add Robin Williams in perhaps his best role ever (too close to Good Morning Vietnam for me to make the call), and you have a wonderfully entertaining movie.Ben Affleck is convincing as the best friend to a genius, able to effectively play the joker and the friend who would "lay down in traffic for you".
That's certainly not the case with Good Will Hunting which was not only the breakthrough film for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but it will probably remain their most personal endeavor.
They didn't even have to lose the New England accents they would have to in most of their other films.When Matt and Ben wrote Good Will Hunting the fact they were able to interest a top director like Gus Van Sant in the project should have said something before one views a frame of film.
Van Sant got an Oscar nominated performance for Matt Damon and a Supporting Actor Oscar for Robin Williams as the psychologist who counsels Damon.Will Hunting is this average lower middle class kid from South Boston who was in the foster care system and suffered a lot of abuse while growing up.
It's one of Affleck's best scenes in his whole career on film.I've known a few Will Huntings in my day, blessed with talent I would like to have had and who threw it away for a combination of reasons.
I love most of the classic movies but this is definitely the best film i have ever seenMat Damon played a great part, showing the full spectrum of emotions in his role.I've ever gone out and bought the soundtrack to the film, i've watched it half a dozen times and always go right through to the final credits.Pure brilliance!.
How could this film have missed those dark assets and end up so totally without atmosphere?This movie got made for one reason only: Robin Williams saw a part for himself.
Team America has hit the nail on the head already.This movie is a daydream of a Beavis & Butthead type student (in other words 95% of them): "Yeah, that's what I would be like if I was a genius." But stupid people and stupid authors in this case cannot imagine the lives of geniuses..
I failed to be convinced by the foul mouthed Damon and Affleck as they strutted about smacking people in the chops and couldn`t help thinking that even though they wrote the script the parts should have been awarded to different actors , after all Billy Bob Thornton has written screenplays for films he hasn`t been cast in and the same criteria should have been applied hereThere are some good points to the movie .
Robin Williams is excellent as the man who tries to show Will his potential and also very good is Stellan Skarsgard who is quite simply one of the greatest character actors to stepped foot outside of Europe and despite my previous criticism of the script there is quite a moving piece of dialogue at the park as Williams character explains to Will what he has seen in lifeBut I`ve got to repeat that there`s less plus points than negatives to this movie and I`ve got to agree with the people who`ve said GOOD WILL HUNTING is boring and unconvincing.
They created such high faluttin buzz around it, that people believed, and wanted to believe it so much --- that they saw brilliance where there was none.Now, I know some people think it's a great movie, I don't think it's a horribly bad movie, I like to compare it to more in the middle of the road movies, and also to some great Made for TV movies (although, not HBO films, HBO films are unusually better than Good Will Hunting would ever be.) It's just a nice, little film, with some good performances, Robin Williams was not good in it, they just gave him the oscar cause the'd been itching to do it for a while.
Like when Robin Williams' character (sorry I forgot his role's name) was telling Hunting repeatedly "It's not your fault" (oh Lord, just thinking of that scene gives me the goosebumps).
I can't understand why people like this film.The basic concept was great, but it could have been SO much better.It fails on many levels:1:  The basic story makes no sense.
Let me tell you, the moment when (Robin Williams) was talking about his wife who farted till she waked herself up, the joke of the girl in the café about old people's love, the stupid never-ending lecture about genius guys (which seems copied, as it is, from many books), all of that are little instances for how disgusting and boring this movie is.
Good Will Hunting is a story about a genius who for various reasons has not been able to take advantage of this and, when we are introduced to him in the film, is working as a cleaner at a university.
And it goes from there.I think that if I had watched this movie when it was released, prior to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's careers, I would've been able to enjoy it much more.
Minnie Driver also is not good looking enough for her part to be believable.Gus Van Sant is one of my favorite directors, although I find his later more "experimental" movies - like Elephant, Paranoid Park and Psycho - much more rewarding as opposed to his earlier work which is more conventional and main stream.
Are we supposed to accept that since Ben Affleck's character isn't as smart as Matt Damon's, he should be satisfied with his lot in life where as Mr. Smarty Pants should claim his rightful place in the heirarchy of society?
Like Ben Affleck's character, I should be happy working construction while my smart friend needs to get motivated and succeed." Granted, the movie does not focus on this, but this theme is definitely present, and extractable.
The premier problem is that the movie overplays it's best card: Matt Damon's(character's) incredible brain.
That makes it totally different!The only bright spot of this movie is Robin Williams who was cast in the sadly stagnant role of the person who just wants to help our little genius, just as Jodie Foster did in Little Man Tate, or Laurence Fishburne in Searching for Bobby Fischer.
Then, we have Stellan Skarsgard in the role that Dianne Wiest and Ben Kinglsey played in the aforementioned films: the academic who is vilified for their attempts to help the genius realize his squandered potential.The only difference that this movie has from the other two I've mentioned is that the misunderstood genius is more independent and gives the establishment a lot of grief.
Every single actor/actress did a great job in the film, and I still can't believe Mat and Ben wrote a whole script of the movie.
A seemingly average guy working as a janitor is really a gifted, brilliant, but troubled young man.I hated this stupid movie so much, that i hoped Damon's character in Saving Private Ryan would be captured by the germans and tortured to death..
This movie allowed people to talk and relate when emotions were road blocks, to point to a scene in Good Will Hunting to establish a base for communication.Here's a point in real time.
I had heard a story on how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had put this script together and had 'shopped' it all over Hollywood and were both kind of ready to sell it, even for a 'piece of chicken' (Jokingly they said in an interview) but they were sort of at their wits'-end when....- it finally happened.Then, look what happened...2 Oscars, 16 other awards and 34 nominations on top of that!
I'm aware of the significance of this movie in bringing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to prominence not only as actors but as screenwriters and watched it with a degree of expectation.
However the story of Damon's rebellious, tortured working-class genius flowering in the rarefied hot-house atmosphere of Boston's Harvard University didn't quite engage me, despite some good acting.The story is implausible in the extreme, as Damon's gifted character shyly but deliberately puts himself forward to get noticed by answering a difficult mathematical problem on display in the halls of the university and then follows his difficult progress to self- awareness which he ultimately achieves through encountering burn-out been there-done that psychologist Robin Williams and a pretty but feisty Anglophile student, played by Minnie Driver.I was entertained by the movie but felt its mix of low comedy (profanity is frequent, especially when Damon gets down with his gang of fellow low-lifes which includes best mate Chuckie, played by Affleck) with heightened psychological drama didn't always convince.
And this dude is also a genius in other areas, at least enough so to impress the judge with his legal cognizance, and he can quote lengthy passages out of philosophy books and he's into organic chemistry just for kicks, and he is a total fire - fighter - cute hunk as well, and he's good at fisticuffs too, and he wins the heart and hand of this super - intelligent, cute and rich chick who turns out to have a heart of gold and is the only one to accept him for what he really is, but he has got this problem facing his own genius because he would rather continue his squalid life of petty crime and dead - end jobs (hey, don't we all?), but then this brilliant psychiatrist who looks ten times more like Sigmund Freud than the man himself comes to the rescue, and -- totally unexpected -- things tie up to a happy end.
This man Will Hunting (played remarkably by Matt Damon) has many flaws though, and soon, he meets his match- Sean, a psychologist (Robin Williams gives a well deserved Oscar winning performance here) and little by little, starts to change.
Sean needs to come to terms with his devastating loss.Robin Williams's touching performance as Sean is nonetheless a very good one, and quite the best thing about this film, although I am not sure that it was really deserving of an Oscar (I preferred Anthony Hopkins in 'Amistad').
A rebellious young college janitor (Matt Damon)  is secretly a maths genius, but even when it is uncovered, he seems reluctant to use it to better his life.A film that is billed as "highly original" is nothing of the kind.
On-screen he seems much more interested in fighting on street corners, shouting at his working class friends (even when they are sat next to him), and getting clever-clever with authority.Good performance from Matt Damon in the central role, but Robin Williams as the psychiatrist who helps him (and who himself ends up helped), is the standout.
It's a somewhat watchable film only for Matt Damon's above average understated performance and Robin Williams' usual quality work, but the emotionally manipulative story is just too overwrought and self indulgent to warrant my admiration.
It unfolds, one after the other, the layers of complexity that marks his multi-dimension personality...When he with Ben...when he with Robin and the most beautiful one is when he is with Minnie.You have to sit and connect yourself with Will Hunting to really takes his place and live a life that comes along once is century.And as Robin William says in the movie..'But you're a genius Will.
Matt Damon clearly knew he would be playing Will Hunting- he and co-writer Ben Affleck crafted a self-indulgent character that actors dream about.
Good Will Hunting is an incredible movie and if I had to say what I think is Gus Van Sant's best film, this would be it.
Robin Williams is superb in one of his best "drama" roles, while Ben Affleck has never been better and Matt Damon gives another fine performance to match his performance in The Talented Mr Ripley.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are fine human beings and good looking guys living great lives.
a movie that keeps its own pace and explores the psychology of the characters or rather the key character here - will hunting.matt damon as will hunting is excellent, and the same goes for ben affleck & minnie driver - but veteran robin williams steals the show as the psychiatrist trying to bring the best out of will hunting and guiding him towards the light.the authors do a credible job in making the chracters believable and lovable.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck give very good performances in this film but the thing that baffles me and I can never seem to understand is why they won an Oscar for this screenplay.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck give even better performances in real life than in the film itself.
But as long as you don't think too long about the implausibilities of the movie's setup, the story is convincingly acted and reasonably well-told, though director Gus Van Sant doesn't show any of the offbeat touches that marked his earlier efforts (the closer he gets here is a weird slow-motion courtyard fight).Robin Williams is fine as always, and more restrained than usual; the rest of the cast is adequate, though I would have loved to see more of Stellan Skaarsgard's math professor, easily the most interesting character..
If you find that blurb offensive you'd better skip this movie."Good Will Hunting" (1997) tells the story of a young genius, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), who comes from a tough neighborhood in South Boston and works as a janitor at MIT.
Meanwhile Will is falling for a Harvard girl (Minnie Driver).The plot of a genius janitor is great and I thought I'd like the film more than I did, but a couple of things really bog it down.
This film makes me sad you left.Stellan Skarsgård plays a great role, the skill in which means I don't love him, but the perfect role compliment Robin and Matt and a deft job.The rest of the cast contains supporting actors which could easily be leads, with Ben and Casey Affleck are perfect in their roles as buddies.Some films show you the magick in movies, this is one.
2nd...the few very deep, emotionally and well played Scenes between the Matt Damon Charactor and Robin Williams/Ben Affleck and his Girlfriend.
And it truly deserved all the Oscars it won 21 years ago.GOOD WILL HUNTING is a very well made movie that has many great things going for it.
The script is very intelligent and thought provoking, and the soundtrack, while not important, is also good.But the real strongpoint of GOOD WILL HUNTING is the cast and their performances: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had never been better, although they won the Academy Award for best screenplay.
Created by Damon and Ben Affleck, this was probably the best movie of the year.
Well guess what I was wrong, I was struck by Robin Williams Oscar winning performance (which he deserved), Matt Damon was also very good in the lead role as Will Hunting.
Ben Affleck was also very good as his friend, so what I'm saying is that this cast who played in this movie were very talented, and deserved all they got.
:PNormally, I like Matt Damon, but I couldn't stand his character was in this movie.
For an actor who was just starting out, I think he might have been trying a little bit too hard, if not way too hard.This is an over-dramatic and boring movie, and Robin Williams didn't help.