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¶ … 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. 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.
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
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…
Works Cited
Good Will Hunting. Director Gus Van Sant / Writers Matt Damon & Ben Affleck.
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