Good Will Hunting

The chapters that we had to read this week were very long but it had lots of information on camera techniques, lighting, filming, and the script itself. There is no way that I could relate all of this information to Good Will Hunting, but I will relate some of the things to the movie. One thing the book talks about is living spaces and offices and how they are set up to portray the movie in certain ways. In Good Will Hunting, the offices that Will meets the psychologists in are always filled with books and messy, and this does resemble the movie because Will is very lost in life right away and doesn’t really know what he is doing. It even shows that Will has mental issues and is a mess throughout most of the movie. The book also talks about lighting and different ways to use lights to show effects in the movie. One of the scenes that really stuck out to me with lighting was the scene when Will was in bed with Skylar and the lighting technique that was used was low-key lighting. This is where most of the set is in shadow and just a few things are highlighted. Will and Skylar are mostly in shadow but you can see parts of their faces and body at times. It really made the scene seem more intimate and romantic. Another scene that I really thought was neat was when Will was in a session with Sean and the camera was going back and forth behind their heads of whoever was talking. The camera was doing close-up shots and it really made the scene more interesting.
When I read the article “Too smart for their own good,” it never had really occurred to me that a lot of Hollywood movies or just TV shows show a lot of geniuses with a lot of emotional and mental problems, until I read it in the article. It seems like the genius hero can never just be a genius, they have to have other problems on the side; then again maybe it wouldn’t be a good movie unless they had these problems. I know that Good Will Hunting wouldn’t have been great without Will’s mental problems because that was a main part of the story.
The next article I read was “Two Thumbs Up, Five Stars, and an Oscar?,” which was interesting because it talked about gifted children in other cultures and asked the question of what do we classify as gifted. It also talked about some of the main messages throughout the movie. The main messages the article talks about are that children often go unrecognized and are misunderstood, gifted people can deal with social and emotional issues, and that there are many people that play important roles in the lives of gifted children. All three of these main messages are really touching to me because it is really true and it makes me think about a lot of things in life.
The last article that I read was “Holden Caulfield, Alex Portnoy, and Good Will Hunting; Coming of Age in American Films and Novels,” and I liked this article the most. I loved how the author talked about the movie. I liked how the article talks about Sean and Will’s relationship because they did really help each other out. I also like how it talks about Will and his best friend Chuckie because to me he really was the one to put things into perspective for Will. Sometimes it takes your best friend to really show you what you can do and have in life and that is what Chuckie did. The quote from the article, “Young Will Hunting is very, very bright; a genius actually. But he’s also bursting with confusion and rage, triggered by an abusive childhood and an adolescence of low expectations. Will can reason like mad, but he’s usually too mad to reason,” really makes a lot of sense because Will is so smart and can do mathematic problems easy because he is able to reason these types of things. When it comes to his and doing the right things, Will can’t because he gets upset way to easy so therefore he can’t reason with his life.
Good Will Hunting was such a great movie to watch. I loved how it had drama and romance yet it was still funny. One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Will went up to the window and asked the guy if he liked apples, then said he got a phone number and added “how do you like those apples.” This showed more of the funny side of the movie. My other favorite part of the movie was when Chuckie was talking to Will about how the happiest day of his life will be when he comes to pick him up and he won’t be there. This part of movie shows how dramatic it can be because it brought tears to my eyes. It had to be hard for Chuckie to tell his best friend to leave him because he can do so much better in life then where he is now. I think that the hero of the movie is Will because he really finds himself in the end of the movie and overcomes a lot in his life. He has lots of conflict but with the help of others he is able to see what he really wants in life. The only part of the movie that I didn’t like fully was the ending because I wish it would have shown Will reuniting with Skylar. It was a good ending I am just a sucker for the full fairly tall ending. I would watch Good Will Hunting again soon because I liked it so much.