MYST #2: Good Will Hunting

I watched Good Will Hunting in my AP Psych class last week. This movie is about Will Hunting, an orphan who works at MIT as a janitor. Will spends the majority of his time hanging out with his friends, getting into fights, and he does not really spend his time wisely. Will has a gift for math and he has an incredible memory. He can remember exact pages from books and his ability to do math is unbelievable. Professor Lambeau notices Will's mathematical genius and offers to get him out of jail as long as he sees a therapist and studies math with him. Will agrees, but does not take any of the therapists seriously and the therapy is unsuccessful. Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, is the next therapist to attempt to help Will. Unlike the other therapists, Sean pushes back at Will and gets over his defense mechanisms, and Will begins to open up. Sean and Will ultimately come very close to each other and they both help each other out. Sean helps Will realize what is important in life and Will helps Sean cope with the death of his wife. 

This movie was very successful and received great reviews. At the 70th Academy Awards, Robin Williams won the award for Best Supporting Actor, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay.) 

The cinematography in this movie is very good, and at the beginning you realize that Will lives in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Boston, because his yard is kind of trashed and the look of the neighborhood surrounding his house looks gray and dull. One of the main settings is a local bar which has the look of a neighborhood bar with Christmas type lights strung and normal looking people filling the place. Another setting is a Harvard classroom and a community college classroom. In the Harvard classroom the students appear to be attentive, clean cut, well dressed, and enthusiastic, while the students in the community classroom are barely awake, not dressed too well, and aren't paying attention to what the professor is saying. The camera angles in this movie are very effective. When Will is trying to solve a formula he writes his work on his mirror with a dry erase marker. The camera blurs out Will and focuses on the formula and also does the opposite. While writing the formula out, the shots fade to the same shot but at a different angle creating a feeling that some time is passing by. Also, to support this feeling each time the formula is showed there is more added to it than one can write in the brief moment that it took to come back to it with the camera. Additionally, the benefit of having the scene of him writing on the mirror lets the viewer see him concentrating on the formula and lets the viewer see the formula being written out which shows the viewer how intelligent Will must be, since the formula probably made little to the viewer. Another effect was a fight scene captured in slow motion. After the fight scene the cops showed up and many flashes of the scene from different camera angles appeared creating a feeling of confusion and made it seem faster without it being filmed in fast motion. There were also several close ups of people in which the only thing that was in color was the person's eyes. 

My favorite scene from the movie is when an MIT student is trying to look intelligent in front of a couple of girls at a Bar by talking about history and then Will, because of his photographic memory, says something along the lines of "do you just memorize pages from textbooks so you can recite them and look all smart in front of others?" because he remembered word for word that what the student was saying was directly out of a certain history textbook. The student then becomes embarrassed and walks out.

Overall I really liked this movie and it was entertaining and had a good message as well. The storyline was exciting and funny at times, but also touching and sweet. I would give this movie a 9/10 and I would recommend it to anyone. This was definitely one of the best movies I have ever watched in school.