Good Will Hunting Movie Trailer. Everybody loves a Cinderella story and ”Good Will Hunting” has two of them: one on screen and one behind the scenes. That’s why this film’s single sweetest moment comes during its opening titles, as the new stars and old friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon walk proudly toward the camera while their writing credit appears. Two young actors with soaring reputations have written themselves a smart and touching screenplay, then seen it directed with style, shrewdness and clarity by Gus Van Sant. There couldn’t be a better choice than the unsentimental Mr. Van Sant for material like this.
As Francis Ford Coppola does with ”The Rainmaker,” Mr. Van Sant demonstrates how entertainingly a real pro can direct a strong if not especially groundbreaking story. The script’s bare bones are familiar, yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart. Never one to condescend to restless young characters, Mr. Van Sant (”Drugstore Cowboy,” ”My Own Private Idaho,” ”To Die For”) neither romanticizes the angst of the film’s college-age hero nor finds anything maudlin in his relationship with a middle-aged psychotherapist. In creating the latter character, the screenplay offers Robin Williams the rare serious role that takes full advantage of his talents.
”Good Will Hunting,” a film much more graceful than the pun in its title, brings on Will Hunting (Mr. Damon) with a gimmick as irresistible as a glass slipper. Will, who works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is Cinderella at the blackboard. An august math professor (Stellan Skarsgard, the Swedish star of ”Breaking the Waves”) posts special, brain-teasing problems for his students, and it turns out that this broom-pushing prodigy from South Boston is the only one who can solve them. To its credit, ”Good Will Hunting” does not use this miraculous development as an excuse to whisk away its hero in a blaze of glory.
It turns out that Will, the most likably recalcitrant coming-of-age character this side of Gilbert Grape, resists any whiff of success. Though he knows the extent of his own brilliance (there’s a nice scene in which he matches wits with a Harvard phony), Will prefers bar-hopping with his working-class buddies to a life in snobbish academe. The pals — Cole Hauser, Casey Affleck and his brother Ben, who amounts to another handsome, charismatic Matt Dillon for Mr. Van Sant — love and protect Will in a way that, apparently, no one else has.
Once the math professor goes searching for the shy genius, ”Good Will Hunting” flirts with narrative danger. Will there be a miracle worker to tame Will’s rebelliousness and bring out his brilliance? Will there be awfully many convenient symmetries to the doctor-patient relationship?
Yes, but this film is bright and knowing enough to bring fresh energy to the jousting between Will and Sean McGuire (Mr. Williams), the fellow underachiever who proves to be the only therapist who can handle him. George Plimpton, playing the starchy sort of doctor who throws up his hands over a patient like this, exclaims, ”No more shenanigans! No more tomfoolery! No more ballyhoo!”
The film strains slightly in creating a set of neatly parallel friendships and by finding too many echoes of Will’s problems in Sean’s own past. But what it does beautifully is to develop a doctor-patient sparring that becomes affecting and important to both parties. Edgy and sarcastic as he is, Will works overtime to locate the doctor’s raw nerves, and the actors play this out passionately.
Mr. Williams is wonderfully strong and substantial here; Mr. Damon, very much the supernova, is mercurial in ways that keep his character steadily surprising. The screenplay’s best moments come in a couple of long, defining monologues (particularly one from Sean in the Boston Public Gardens) that angrily bring Will and Sean to life. The painting in Sean’s office, which prompts Will to make an infuriatingly glib but clever speech about the therapist’s character, is by Mr. Van Sant.
The filmmaker’s background as an art student shows up in other ways as well: in the film’s wry picture of college life, in its illuminating production design (by Missy Stewart) and in quietly elegant cinematography (by Jean Yves Escoffier, worlds away from his previous ”Gummo”). Precise, revealing atmospheric shifts move the film from classroom to dorm room to neighborhood bar and make the territory seem much larger, as Mr. Van Sant tacitly dramatizes the class tensions at the heart of this story. Whether Will sees refuge or honor in a life of bricklaying, the film captures the full extent of his turmoil. As the teasing, beautiful medical student who can peer into Will’s soul as easily as she can tell a dirty joke, Minnie Driver adds further charm to an already wise, inviting story.
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, John Mighton, Stellan Skarsgård, Rachel Majorowski, Casey Affleck, Colleen McCauley, Cole Hauser, Matt Mercier
Screenplay by: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
Production Design by: Missy Stewart
Cinematography by: Jean-Yves Escoffier
Film Editing by: Pietro Scalia
Costume Design by: Beatrix Aruna Pasztor
Set Decoration by: Jaro Dick
Art Direction by: James McAteer
Music by: Danny Elfman
MPAA Rating: R for strong language, including some sex-related dialogue.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: December 5, 1997
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