Good Will Hunting

¶ … Hunting - an all-American story While it was a huge success financially and critically acclaimed as well, the film offers vivid focus on a young math savant from the socioeconomic realities of Boston's South End, an underserved section of town that is not unlike inner city environments across the country. This paper reviews and critiques the film from the perspective of sociology and the changes a marginalized youth is able to go through thanks to his hitherto unknown brilliance in math.

Thesis: the striking contrast between the bad Will and examples of the good Will, and the juxtaposition between the economic deprivations that Will grew up in -- including being beaten down in his home life -- and on the other hand his savant-like ability to solve extremely difficult math problems at MIT, points up to a dramatically exceptional character unlike any in "coming of age" or "rags-to-riches" films.

Definition -- Background The filmgoer witnesses a young man who is a janitor and in short order the filmgoer also witnesses the inside of an institution of high learning. There are textbooks, and a blackboard with dizzying mathematical formulas; the director is setting up the juxtaposition and the tension in the story is being previewed. The scene at Will's house introduces the filmgoer the two worlds that the protagonist will be experiencing.

This is not a plot summary; this is setting the table for how craftily the director is providing the seeds for the tensions and the character interactions as the story moves along. Support #1 -- Will is marginalized within his own marginalized peer group The excellence of the director's decisions brings some clarity to the story in terms of what the protagonist does and what he may be able to do.

It is clear to the viewer that despite having a job as a janitor, the protagonist is an avid reader, which places him as a unique character within the peer group that he is part of. He reads at a relentless pace, which actually makes him a marginalized person within his own marginalized peer group.

How many of his friends read voluminously as he does? The answer is none, of course, and yet this is the group he grew up with and hangs out with and is certainly a part of notwithstanding the depth of his brainpower vs. The average mentality of his buddies and peer group. This adds to the richness of the script, and gives the director powerful tools with which to work his magic.

Support #2 -- Mop in hand, math solution at hand The Lambeau challenge to his class-full of upper crust students is just another portion of the script that presents the opportunity for the protagonist to emerge from the drudgery of a janitor who happens to be a well-read but "uneducated" person to the mystery person who solved a very esoteric and obscure mathematical equation.

The story is made stronger as the mystery continues; the script allows for some righteous irony as professor Lambeau tries to discover which of his students -- this could only be a student after all, no one would ever suspect a janitor to solve a difficult math problem. It is ironic that temporarily Will is accused of defacing the blackboard when in fact he is showing his hitherto hidden genius.

Racing down the hall as though he was guilty of something (Will has learned to run from trouble in his marginalized neighborhood and he reverts to his escape mode albeit he's done nothing wrong).

Support #3 -- Hunting for and finding the "good Will" A boy who has grown up disadvantaged in a hard scrabble neighborhood captures the fancy of the filmgoers because of his charm and his previously hidden skills; on the surface he is considered well below the students who walk the halls that he mops, but there is more that drives the story.

In effect, at one level the higher education milieu has scorned the ruffian from South Boston, but he has actually turned the tables on the ivory tower of academe by using those lofty scholarly tools (difficult math) against the academia represented in the film. In other words, it is not just a case of getting even or showing vitriol in any sense; it is a bad boy who is a closet genius and he just needs the right setting to be a good boy.

His ability to show his stuff helps the director use the sociological contrasts for the purpose of entertainment. He uses academia's weapons (mathematical challenges) and turns those weapons against the piety of higher education. The juxtaposition of the protagonist checking out attractive young women (and getting into a fight) while the professor is putting more theorems on the board is the director's perfect chance to make this film a dynamic and highly worthy sociological story with twists and turns that keep the audience riveted.

The audience chooses the bad Will over a pretentious grad student who is trying to move in on Skylar, because the underdog who has his own secret weapons is far more interesting than the pomposity of the quintessentially boring high toned student on the make. Concession: In fairness, this story is also has a powerful stories within the main story, including a professor (and a counselor) who try to turn Will into a more idealized young man, something like the professor.