Login
No disrespect is intended to the perfectly fine script that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck cooked up, but I think the real Best Original Screenplay Oscar should have went to Boogie Nights. But let’s focus in on Good Will Hunting. The script is great in building intimate, character-driven moments that play off believably and beautifully, and it effectively evokes the language and atmosphere of South Boston, but it paints in too broad of strokes that signal exactly where the characters journeys are going to wind up by the time we fade to black. Still, it’s not a grave injustice, and it’s not hard to see why the Academy was won over by the film.
But the real joy in Good Will Hunting is the assured, committed and heartfelt performances in the four lead roles. Matt Damon proved himself to be quite a talented actor, and his resume keeps expanding with a nice combination of movie star turns and more challenging material. Minnie Driver has rarely had quite so engaging a performance as she does here. She’s by turns tough, brainy, sexy and utterly charming, a beacon of light and hope for Damon’s character amongst the poverty and overnights in jail. Ben Affleck is a little hit-and-miss, but there’s a monolog late in the film in which he details his hopes for Damon that is pretty touching and extraordinary. You can sense a lifetime of friendship and a deep bond between these two without them ever truly making eye contact, and he then proceeds to dispense tough love and harsh words while making sure it is coming from a place of love and concern. Is Robin Williams the best performance in the film? Quite possibly, but it’s hard to say. He’s certainly fully immersed in the quiet pain of this man, and he sprinkles the role with tiny details here and there in his dialog that give the sense of a life fully lived and a spirit being entombed by his grief. His scenes with Damon are very touching for the fatherly way he takes to this boy, and how he breaks protocol yet continues to see him as a therapist in a way to help himself. It’s great work.
Sure the story is essayed from the moment all of the main players converge – he will eventually grow up and mature, he will go and get the girl, everything will work out correctly in the end – but it doesn’t entirely matter. What makes Good Will Hunting so satisfying a movie is that it has a big heart, and it uses it to illuminate the healing of a damaged soul. That is surrounds itself with so authentic a portrait of South Boston and lets its characters speak in their natural rhythms and doesn’t try to force them into “movie character speak” is fantastic. It’s well-trod territory for certain, but there’s enough character, beauty in the specified vernacular and a wounded but beating heart at its center.
