Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting
Good Will Hunting was a great movie! I had watched the movie previously but had never finished the movie (as I tend to fall asleep when I watch movies at home!). It was an inspiring and comical movie that had a great theme, a hero, and a great ending. Will was a genius that had grown up in a bad environment of countless foster homes and heartbreak. Jack Garner quoted in Holden Caulfield, Alex Portnoy, and Good Will Hunting: Coming of Age in American Films and Novels “Young Will Hunting is very, very bright; a genius actually. But he’s also bursting with confusion and rage, triggered by an abusive childhood and an adolescence of low expectations. Will can reason like mad, but he’s usually too mad to reason.” This is a great quote that sums Will up entirely.
I liked how the movie started and showed the life of Will and how he progressed as a person, it was like watching a child grow up and mature. Will began to gain trust for other people as he started dating Skylar and seeing Sean, the psychiatrist. Sean and Will began a friendship from the first session at Sean’s office. I think that what made Will intrigued by Sean and comfortable during the sessions, was the environment. It was not a white 4 x 4 room or a psychologist’s office with a leather couch. Sean was a professor at a public school and dressed casually, Sean wanted nothing from Will but to help him psychologically and be a friend.
In the book it says that the major appeal of a character lies in the qualities that set them apart from other people. Will was a unique individual, he was a genius, a rebellious teen, and a foster child that had been abused. Will did not see that being a genius could open up possibilities, nor did he want those possibilities at first. As the movie progressed and Will grew, he decided to take the wonderful opportunities and he learned to love other people, Skylar, Sean, and his friends.
In the book it defines a theme as a unifying central concern of the film, or the special focus that unifies the work. In Good Will Hunting I think that the theme can be a number of different things including: friendship, love conquers all, good vs. bad, where there’s a will there is a way, hard work and determination get the job done, we (humans) can be become anything that we want to become, or good will. All of these themes were portrayed in some way during this movie. The article Coming of age in American Films and Novels, talks about the theme “good will”. It also focused on the relationship between Sean and Will and how the two individuals were so different yet the same, they had a beautiful relationship.
In class we talked about heroes, we gave examples such as Batman and Spiderman. In the movie I think that you could see four different heroes, Professor Lambeau, Sean, Will, and Skylar. Professor Lambeau for rescuing Will from jail and giving him opportunities for his life, Sean for being a great mentor and helping Will through his psychological and emotional struggle, Skylar for showing Will what it really felt like to be in love with a person, and Will for being a role model to people of all ages. Will shows young children that no matter what hardships life faces you with, you can still prosper and crawl out of the dungeon. I think that Will gives the youth today hope for the future because they can watch the movie and say, if Will make it through all that then I can make it through HS, etc..
In the article, Coming of age in American Films and Novels, it talked about how the day Will started solving the math problems at MIT, his life was changed. It is strange how one little incident like solving a math problem can change a person’s entire life. The change can be positive (as it was for Will) or negative (as it is for those who commit crimes).
The article Too smart for their own good? was interesting, it talked about how movies
and television portray geniuses as emotionally stunted, lonely, and unsociable. I found that very
interesting because it is true, I often watch movies about geniuses and the movie depicts a character who is intelligent but doesn’t know how to play with other children or doesn’t get to be a child because intellectually at age 5 they are already 18 years old. Since I am not a genius I often wonder if that is true in ever day life, do genius children get a chance to just be children?
This was a great movie and I think was good to analyze and pick out elements such as character styles, themes and stories of heroes.