Good Will Hunting - Collector's Edition (1998, DVD)

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to watch Good Will Hunting and forget about the last seven years of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in the tabloids? No Bennifer, no Reindeer Games, no Armageddon. Okay, I'm mostly pissed at Ben Affleck for betraying the promises of Dazed and Confused and Chasing Amy. And the promises of this movie, too. Because these two show a lot of chops, both acting-wise and writing-wise (they wrote the script together and won Oscars for their efforts).

Together with director Gus Van Sant, they managed to put together a story of a young guy with an extraordinary intelligence who is both beyond his fellow man, but still deeply human. Will Hunting (Damon) is that genius, loyal to his pals in Southie - South Boston, that is. He's a typical townie, works various low-key jobs, goes drinking with his buddies (Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, and Cole Hauser) at night. Except that he often retires early to study math and sciences and history. This comes completely naturally to him, and he eats it up.

His current gig is as a janitor at MIT. Famously brilliant math professor Gray Lambeau (Stellan Skarsg rd, in a low key role) posts a tough math problem on one of the hall boards and challenges his class to solve it. If they're lucky, they'll solve it by the end of the semester. Will solves it overnight. The professor chases him of as he's finishing only to have to track him down once he realizes that the solution was correct. Will's a troubled kid, though, rough, confrontational, and stubborn; Prof. Lambeau rescues him from a short stint in jail for assault. The deal is that Will has to study math with the Prof twice a week and go to a psychologist twice a week. Will burns through a few doctors, humiliating them, and figures he doesn't need help. So Lambeau sets him up with his old college roommate, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who's slumming at the local community college, mourning his dead wife. Perhaps these two can help each other self-actualize and work through their problems -- and help Will get the girl (Minnie Driver)?

There's a lot to like in Good Will Hunting, particularly the character of Will himself. He desperately wants to be a regular shmoe, and pals around with the same Southie kids he grew up with. On the other hand, he is vastly different than them - in fact, vastly different than everyone. He can whip through math problems faster than the finest Fields medal winner (Prof. Lambeau), and resents when his difference comes to light when he has to explain a math solution to this same famous professor. It is a position that no one can relate to, and ultimately isolates Will anytime it's revealed. When he reveals it, it's to blow off someone else, to slap them down. When others reveal it, he's pushed away, which is the last thing any person wants.

Unfortunately the film (or the script, perhaps), doesn't really trust the audience to buy this as a sole motivation for Will's standoffishness, so they give him an abusive childhood in multiple foster homes. It's a throw-away character detail that intends to enforce the protective barrier that Will puts around himself and his friends. But it's completely unnecessary. It muddies the more interesting nature of the character with a fairly clich d way of shorthanding his isolation. He's a character isolated by his exceptional nature, afraid of being rejected for his flaws, as, in a sense, are we all. Will's exceptional nature is just magnified some as to highlight this aspect.

Throw-away bits like this are one of the few flaws of the film. It's a little too packed with dead relatives and past regrets, a little too full of detail. I feel a little funny saying that, because these details also make these characters colorful, living people. But they are cast out casually, details that contain whole stories that are never explored. Unfortunately, in a movie, we can only really touch upon one central story. The other ones we get hints of end up merely being fingers pointing to the moon, a distraction from the radiant narrative at the core.

The narrative at the core is a good one, a bit of a coming of age story, where the youth learns to be an adult. It's one of those things we love to see in our films and movies, but put off as long as possible in life. I've been seeing this theme in a lot of films lately, so maybe it's me, something that I'm spotting in these films that reflects my own thoughts. And that's one of the great things about Good Will Hunting: there's a lot of minor themes that are blended in with the major theme that pretty much anyone will find something that mirrors themselves. Unless you are totally at peace with yourself and without issues; in that case, start a religion.

This is a very talky, character-centered film, which may put people off. It's not a chick-flick, at least not entirely, as it's not single-minded about the central romantic relationship, instead blending it in with the rest of the character drama pretty naturally. It's also a fairly funny film, but in a more witty way that plays off the characters instead of manufacturing gags and becoming a comedy. Not that manufacturing gags is a bad thing, necessarily, but in a character drama like this, laughs drawn from situations that the characters are in are often laughs at ourselves, but with the distance that fictional characters can provide.

We get a number of good performances, particularly from the central leads. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck both come off as natural and charismatic, showing their star-qualities without the self-consciousness that being superstars would later bring. Damon, in particular, shows us that he's not always the blank-faced one-note that he tends to be in his roles. Robin William, though, smokes 'em both. As the psychologist from Southie, he's serious but not schmaltzy, witty but not wild, and really showcases that great sense of timing that's made him a great comedian, as well as a good dramatic actor (when he doesn't overdo it -- I guess that applies to his comedic work, too). He steals the scenes he's in without being an overt scene stealer.

There are some good supporting performances to back our leads. Shucking accusations of nepotism, Casey Affleck turns in a funny, lively performance as Morgan, the runt of Will's buddies. He gets a lot of the good bits, including a funny but implied scene where he's watching porn in Ben Affleck's mom's house. And in my continuing efforts to point out actors who have appeared on Oz, Scott William Winters (Cyril O'Reilly) has a tiny part where he plays a Harvard jerk and gets dissed by our supergenius Will. (By the way, this movie really hates formal education. I missed my cue for that rant, but it just kind of rubbed me the wrong way.)

Good Will Hunting is sweet and thoughtful look at some extraordinary and wounded characters, with enough good to outweigh the occasional deadweight. It's got wit, it's got romance, and it's got musings on life. Not too pretentious, not too sappy. It's the little bear's porridge. Dig it.