Good Will Hunting
Thoughts on my favourite movie - Spoilers for the whole film.
I was asked recently why I loved Good Will Hunting, my favourite film. It is hard to encapsulate what the film means to me entirely in words - I prefer to show it to people. But I thought I would give it a go.
In a way Good Will Hunting as a film matches the quote from Dostoevsky “Above all, don’t lie to yourself”.
The film is centred around Will Hunting, an arrogant, cocky, brash kid raised in Boston. Will is a genius, his ability to process complex mathematics and logic is extraordinary. Yet Will’s Achilles heel is his crippling fear of abandonment.
Raised as an orphan, bouncing through foster homes and subject to horrific abuse, his life has been about survival, not living.
His life was defined by those experiences and by what others thought of him. When asked the simple question - ‘What do you want’ - he is incapable of answering.
When pressure builds in his relationship with Skylar, his instinct is to lie about his love for her - so she can’t hurt him by leaving him.
Whilst it would be egotistical to say I see myself in the character of Will Hunting, I do. I certainly don’t have his intelligence but when I first saw the film in 2018 I saw a reflection of myself.
Will is arrogant and cocky but at his heart is a person who was afraid to try, afraid to fail, content to live in mediocrity rather than risk progress.
I used to think that because I knew a lot, that mattered. But intelligence and wisdom are fundamentally different things.
There are many moments in my life where I felt like I had intelligence but no wisdom. In those moments I felt like Will sitting on that park bench, I knew about a lot but I hadn’t smelled the Sistine Chapel.
At the time I felt obligated by what others thought of me. There was about a year of my life where I lived in that paralysis, I couldn’t start a conversation with a stranger, to go into a shop on my own, or a restaurant left me with debilitating anxiety. Just a complete paralysis to do anything.
Watching Good Will Hunting was the first time I really kicked myself out of it.
The film still resonates in that way, I'm no longer the shy kid completely incapable of having conversations. But I know there are still moments where I drift toward comfort, or toward the expectations of others.
But Will isn't only lying to himself about what others think of him. He's also telling himself he owes it to the people who love him to stay where he is.
The moment that collapses that lie is the speech delivered by Will’s best friend Chuckie.
Chuckie: No. No, no, no. No, fuck you. You don’t owe it to yourself. You owe it to me. ‘Cause tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be 50. And I’ll still be doing this shit. And that’s all right, that’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in. And that’s bullshit. `Cause I’d do anything to fuckin’ have what you got. So would any of these fuckin’ guys. It’d be an insult to us if you’re still here in 20 years. Hanging around here is a fuckin’ waste of your time.
I love every single one of my friends. There are people in my life that I would lie down in traffic for, but I know that I would never want to hold them back. The greatest relationship I have in my life is with my friend.
Whilst I can’t speak for him, that relationship is as close to another brother for me. At moments it is almost eerie how similar we are, the same comments, the same jokes, moments of pure hivemind. Both of us would do almost anything for each other.
Yet I know that when the time comes for one of us to leave the country, neither of us will hold the other back.
On the contrary, I would hope we would be each other’s biggest supporters.
I think that is why I love Good Will Hunting. At its core the story is so human. It is about a boy who is scared of reaching for more, even whilst everyone in his life wants him to.