Good Will Hunting
Director: Gus Van Sant
Writer: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
Cast: Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Stellan Skarsgård, Minnie Driver, Casey Affleck, Cole Hauser
Seen on: 8.5.2023

Content Note: ableism

Plot:
Will (Matt Damon) works as a janitor at MIT and otherwise gets mostly in trouble with his best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck). But Will is also brilliantly smart and likes math problems. When he finds the solution to a heretofore unsolved problem, professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) is hoping to recruit Will to work on math problems with him. But Will doesn’t like rules and authorities. When he is arrested, Lambeau sees his chance to offer Will a deal: if he does math and therapy, he can avoid jail. Reluctantly, Will accepts, despite the fact that he is determined to sabotage therapy – until he meets Sean (Robin Williams).

It has been many years that I saw Good Will Hunting and it’s still a film that is very watchable and engaging, despite the fact that I have many issues with it.

Good Will Hunting is an expertly made movie with great direction and an excellent cast with Robin Williams stealing every scene he is in. It is definitely not a bad film and you can absolutely sink into it and let yourself be pulled along by the story without thinking too much about it. You’ll be emotional, you’ll be satisfied (in spite of or because of the predictable outcome of everything) and it will be time well spent.

But if you look at the film more closely, issues crop up left and right. For one, there is the entire notion of “genius” that makes me deeply uncomfortable here. On the one hand, Will is just the stereotypical example of a gifted person: a white man, socially troubled, often an asshole, but knows everything, thanks to a photographic memory. And that is just not how “genius” or “brilliance” work for the most part. It’s not just a natural state, it’s something that needs to be fostered. And it often comes in a very social, non-white, non-male package. At least, things are made a little more interesting here because of his working class status.

On the other hand, it’s Will’s genius that makes him worth saving to so many people – Lambeau, Sean, Skylar (Minnie Driver) and even Chuckie who is in pretty much the same position as Will, just without almost supernatural abilities. Wouldn’t Chuckie deserve a better life, too? What about everybody else just struggling to get by? Why should we ignore all of them to focus on the one guy who is so smart that he should be capable of practically anything – and is barely interested in being saved? Well, at first – it’s part of his journey to be able to accept help and that is one of the best things about the character and his arc: Will might be supersmart but that doesn’t mean that he can get by without other people. But the point still stands: being smart somehow makes Will worth more here than other people. And that is ableism, plain and simple.

Compared to the genius issues, the gender issues take a back-seat in the film, but they are still very present. Skylar is little more than Will’s reward and motivation, the way their relationship is tilted towards him also makes me unhappy. We have seen this kind of dynamic too often, in- and outside of films.

But it is very possible, as I said, to ignore these things and let yourself get swept away by a well-crafted film. It depends on you if you want to do that.

Summarizing: good, if you don’t think too much about it.