Review of Good Will Hunting (1997) by Christopher J — 26 Dec 2013

Good Will Hunting is one of the few stories that bring tears to my eyes whenever I think about them. Will Hunting, the film's protagonist... so fleshed out, so specific, so eccentric in his worldviews... Yet at the same time he is universal.

His fears and vulnerabilities, and his inner demons, and how he eventually overcomes them, will always stay in my memory. His sheer humanness has something to teach, or remind, us all: be vulnerable. Be vulnerable to vulnerability.

And Will shows that that's not as easy as it sounds. It's scary, aye. It can hurt so much, aye. But it pays off. Eventually it'll pay off. We should not idealise our love. We should not fall in love with ideas of people. We should know them inside out; let them not be strangers but our doubles. The courage to do this, I believe, will be infectious. It'll bring warring nations together. Ironic, this: that courage is not the ability to hold up a sword against a Goliath, but to drop it, to leave the Goliath, that is cynicism and pain and fear itself, to get to us, eat us, slam us, do whatever it wants, for good or bad.

Good Will Hunting rings of emotional truth: painful but unsentimental, serious but humorous, saddening but heartening.