Sorry for the long delay between posts, I have finished up my last college classes, picked up and moved to a new town, started an internship, and landed two new jobs all in the last two weeks. So being busy is an understatement. I watched Good Will Hunting last night, and had some thoughts on it. So here ya go.
Good Will Hunting is one of my favorite movies, probably #2 behind The Shawshank Redemption. The movie is really heavy on dialogue, so the movie might drag to some people, but it has two scenes that are at direct opposites of the emotional spectrum.
The most famous scene, the one that everybody knows, is the bar scene. Ben Affleck's character tries to pick up Minnie Driver using one of those predictable "She knows it is coming but I don't care" one liners to start a conversation. After some Harvard prick interrupts and tries to humiliate him, Matt Damon's Will Hunting comes in to absolutely destroy the guy. He quotes the book the guy is plagiarizing, even telling him the page number. After the confrontation, Will Hunting get's the girls phone number and sees the doucher from earlier at a diner. He walks up to the window and gives two of the most famous lines in movies.
"Do you like apples"
Shaking his head, "Yea."
"Well I got her number. How do you like them apples!" And scene.
That sequence has me rolling on the floor, peeing-my-pants-it-is-so-funny laughing every time that I see it. Matt Damon plays the part so well, delivers the line with just the right whatever it is to deliver a line just right, that it makes the whole movie. The scene is hysterically funny, and one of the most memorable moments in the entire 126 minute movie.
An hour later, an equally memorable scene happens, again with Minnie Driver's character and Will Hunting. I was watching it with my girlfriend's roommate, and she said something pretty deep while the movie was playing.
"This is pretty hard to watch."
It was the scene in the movie where Minnie Driver asks Matt Damon to move to California with her, and he loses his mind. He freaks out, telling her about the horrific abuse he suffered as a orphan, and how she cannot possibly understand anything that he has gone through. And when he stops screaming at her, Minnie says that she will leave him alone if he doesn't love her. At this point, everyone and their mother can tell that the couple is in love, that they have a really good thing going, and this girl is the one who is going to make Will Hunting let people inside of the bubble that he has put up for the entire 20 years of his life.
And he takes a breath, looks her square in the eyes, and says "I do not love you."
It is honestly painful to watch. The whole scene is gut wrenching, when you finally hear about the abuse Will has gone through and you see why he is the way that he is. It is borderline uncomfortable watching Will walk away from the woman he loves and seeing her crumble like a wall built on sand.
The fact that these two scenes occur within an hour of each other, and that Matt Damon is a good enough actor to play a role on such extremes of the emotional spectrum is one reason that the movie captivates me. I could watch it over and over again, and pick up on something I missed the first time, a little quote or throwaway line that ends up being incredibly insightful if you look close enough to catch it. I highly recommend the movie to anybody that has not seen it, it is an absolute classic.
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