Accent

Phil Villarreal's Review: Good Will Hunting

Matt Damon is the witty craftsman and Ben Affleck is the dumb hack. Everyone knows that, right? That the stereotypes are so easily acceptable speaks to how effective both actors were in their breakout film, "Good Will Hunting." Damon will always be Will, the self-deprecating genius who bubbles with talent and charm. And Affleck is stuck as the eternal Chuckie, a bumbling dimwit who lucks into success and benefits from having the right friends. Never mind that there is ample evidence that Affleck, like Damon, possesses a daunting intellect. Not only did he co-write the Oscar-winning "Good Will Hunting" script with Damon, but Affleck is known to speak at least three languages, and his interviews and DVD commentaries reveal a formidable vocabulary and wealth of knowledge. Damon received a well-deserved best actor nomination for his layered role as a troubled, self-taught savant who learns to accept a higher calling and abandon his comfortable beer-swilling, mop-pushing life. But too often overlooked is Affleck, who plays Will's dim but kind sidekick, Chuckie, who encourages Will to recognize his gifts and take advantage of them - if not for his own good, then out of respect for his friends. Without the contrast of Chuckie as lumbering and gorillalike, Will wouldn't have stood apart as so ethereal and brilliant. Will is a cocky, 20-year-old janitor at MIT with a photographic memory and an intuitive knack for seeing and understanding mathematical concepts. Just for fun, he sneaks by professor Gerald Lambeau's classroom and covertly solves a complicated problem on the blackboard, amazing students and faculty members alike. Will is also a troublemaker, an orphan who was abused in foster homes and now acts out in spontaneous street fights. His latest tussle, in which he slugged a cop, has landed him in jail, but Gerald (Stellan Skarsgård) tracks him down and gets the judge to release Will on the condition that he collaborate with Gerald in mathematics and see a therapist. The inspirational drama, directed with a soft, steady touch by Gus Van Sant, continues to enthrall. Will's steady rise to self-actualization was no less predictable on my first viewing than it was on my 10th. The film succeeds not because of an overall arc, but as a chain of smaller moments that glimmer in their minuscule perfection. Short, poignant conversations pace the film. The images tumble out of the mind like an old box of greeting cards. Will and his friends palling around in the car, making cracks about putting double burgers on layaway. Therapist Sean Maguire (played by Robin Williams in a role that won him the best supporting actor Oscar) hugging Will, repeating over and over that it's not his fault he was abused. Will stares down National Security Agency officials and unleashes a comically rapid-fire, 448-word diatribe about how he thinks his talents would be corrupted by the government toward unsavory ends. His final words - "hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president" - play as eerie prophecy. Toward the end, there's an eye-moistening sequence in which Chuckie uses tough love to give Will a push to start a new life. The most winning moment may be the one parodied in Kevin Smith's "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" (2001), in which Will impresses his future soul mate, Skylar (Minnie Driver), by defending Chuckie from an academic bully at a bar. It's a tug of war between Will and the people who care about him. Gerald ravenously tugs him into the world of academia, while Skylar, Chuckie and the Williams character provide softer emotional encouragement. They can show him the way, but there must be a Will. The story of the way the film was made is as much of a fluttering fairy tale as the narrative itself. Affleck and Damon were boyhood friends in Boston, and they even played on the same Little League team. Struggling actors in their mid-20s who were unsatisfied with their careers, they collaborated on a script, expanding on a screenplay Damon wrote for a class at Harvard, and shopped it around. The script was optioned, but it languished. Just as the studio system was about to spit the script out, Affleck and Damon's friend Smith (later the director and writer of "Jay and Silent Bob") shopped the project to Miramax, which saw potential and allowed Damon and Affleck to act in the film. The rest was a whirlwind, culminating in Affleck and Damon's fist-pumping walk of victory to grab their Oscars. They couldn't have written a better ending.