Movie Good Will Hunting Is an Artfully

¶ … movie Good Will Hunting is an artfully written and produced film which explores one important part of the human condition from the viewpoint of all of the major characters. The question probed in one way or another by all the major characters is how we as human beings balance the need to be connected to others with the risk of being hurt if those people leave us in some way.

Will is hunting for a way to fit into a world that doesn't make sense to him. He has two major barriers to connecting to people. First, he is a true self-educated genius with a photographic memory. Second, he is an orphan who was shuffled from foster home to foster home and was sometimes viciously beaten by foster parents. He has no reason to trust other people.

He does manage to connect with some childhood friends, especially Chuckie, his best friend. The four young men squabble among themselves but are very loyal to each other, even helping Will beat up someone who teased him in kindergarten. This incident puts Will in front of a judge again: Will has been in trouble with the law several times before. A professor at MIT, where Will works as a janitor, recognizes his brilliance, and arranges for Will to be put on probation, with therapy as a requirement.

As all these factors interplay, everyone around Will tries to help him learn to connect with others. The woman he picks up in a bar accepts him even when she knows he is lying to her. As his therapist helps Will learn how to take risks and truly connect with people, Will provokes him into getting past the death of his wife and stop hiding from the world himself. As he is tutored with the math professor, he manages to help the math professor and the therapist, who are friends, truly heal the rift that has grown between them since they were roommates in college.

By the end of the movie, even Will's best friend Chuckie has prodded him to take the risks Will needs to take to really live his life. His relationship with his friends is superficial, drinking after work or watching ball games. They are known to him and safe, so he doesn't have to take emotional risks, and the activities are all simple, so he doesn't have to face how much more gifted he is than virtually everyone else.

All the characters search for and find the good in Will, and in the process, they become more deeply involved with people important to them as well. The professor regains a friend; the psychotherapist gets prodded into re-engaging with the world again, Schulyer grows from someone superficially bantering with strangers in a bar to someone ready to fight for the relationship she wants with Will; Chuckie gives Will the courage to want more than he currently has; and Will forms a real bond with the therapist and risks leaving all that is familiar and safe to him so he can be with Schuyler.

The movie uses setting well to demonstrate how isolated the main characters are. Will is often shown riding public transportation by himself, often elevated above the buildings below. This is his true situation - he is apart from people, and intellectually, well above them. Both help isolate him. His intellectual isolation is demonstrated by how he reveals his gifts, on blackboards when the halls are deserted. The first time the professor tries to talk to him about it, he rejects him with harsh language and when followed, hides in the maze of hallways. Most of the other characters are shown isolated as well, particularly the therapist in his silent apartment and Schuyler lost in her textbooks.

Throughout the movie, everyone is looking for the good in Will Hunting. In the process, they all discover good will within themselves. The professor and the therapist make a real connection with each other at the end of the movie instead of the stiff, awkward and often confrontational meetings they had had before. Schuyler completely accepts Will's humble background as well as his revelation that he has been terribly abused, and doesn't give up even when he brutally ends their relationship.