Competition
Good Will Hunting
Good material is hard to find. So young actors Matt Damon (The Rainmaker)
and Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy) decided to write their own. Good Will Hunting
is a coming-of-age story, about dreams and trust: Will (Matt Damon) is
a mathematical genius but also from the wrong side of the tracks. He's
a regular in juvenile court.
Mathematics professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) doesn't want to see
his talent wasted and speaks up for the unruly youth in court. A psychiatrist
(Robin Williams) is supposed to help Will back onto the straight and narrow
and teach him how to cope with his life. Thus begins a relationship in
which both will learn and grow.
The young authors never would have dreamed that their script could
arouse the interest of director Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho). But
the filmmaker was excited from the start: "It was a good story, and I wanted
to work on it immediately after reading it." The script also hooked Robin
Williams, a master of both comic and dramatic roles. "We were overwhelmed.
It was like the grand prize in a lottery," Damon and Affleck remember.
A complex, compassionate and mature film was the result. Good Will
Hunting is not only the study of a friendship, it also depicts the people
of an entire region. "It was important for us that the script reek of Boston,"
says Affleck. "Since we both grew up there, we know the city like our back
pocket. We wanted to write something that reveals the essence of our home."
The young writers only had good things to say about the director. Affleck:
"Gus is like a European director. He's trusting and gives you time to develop
scenes and explore the chances and risks in them." Anna Richter
Synopsis
Gus Van Sant has always been able to bring out the best in young talent.
River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves (My Own Private Idaho) and Matt Dillon (Drugstore
Cowboy) are just some of the actors who have benefitted from his patronage
in the past. With Good Will Hunting, he has gone one stage further, turning
the screenplay of the two young actors, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, into
a film. The outcome is a moving drama about friendship, trust and lifelong
dreams. When the ambitious mathematics professor Lambeau (Stellan Skårsgard
from Breaking the Waves) finds out that the young cleaner Will Hunting
(Matt Damon) is a mathematical genius, he wants to turn him into his master
pupil. But the highly talented Will who comes from a lower-class background
and is about to face the magistrate in a juvenile court yet again, has
no real interest in an academic career. Lambeau intervenes and gets the
court to let him teach Will, on one condition: he has to go into therapy.
Psychiatrist Sean McGuire (Robin Williams) finds that Will Hunting is one
tough cookie. Good Will Hunting is a witty, gentle, yet powerful film that
fits in perfectly with Van Sant's exciting uvre: multi-layered and
showing true maturity, perhaps surprising given the age of the scriptwriters.
(Dir): Gus Van Sant (Scr): Ben Affleck, Matt Damon (Cast): Robin
Williams, Stellan Skårsgard, Matt Damon, Minnie Driver, Ben Affleck
(Running time): 126 Minutes
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