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Foreword: I preferred to keep the original title of the film because the Italian translation "Will Hunting - Genio Ribelle," complete with the usual absurd little subtitle, does not do justice to the beauty of the work in question...
Can two broke kids write a film destined to be directed by Gus Van Sant, starring Robin Williams, and win an Oscar, on their first try, for Best Screenplay? They can, if their names are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a young drifter, a boy who has accumulated a sad series of traumatic experiences, orphaned, moved from one foster family to another, suffering shameful abuse from foster parents. He lives alone, drifts between menial and poorly paid jobs in the company of a gang of cocky troublemakers, with whom, especially with Chuckie (Ben Affleck), he has a rough, masculine, and fraternal relationship. Despite the miserable life he leads, Will is perhaps the greatest living math genius. He reads mountains of books by leafing through their pages carelessly and immediatetly learns and memorizes their entire contents. He solves extremely complicated theorems and tackles mathematical proofs that challenge the world's brightest minds, with the ease with which ordinary people perform additions. The boy, once again in trouble with the law, is noticed by Jerry Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), a professor at the renowned MIT in Boston, who decides to take him under his protective wing, allowing him to devote himself to mathematics but with the obligation to attend therapy. Will agrees, but having read virtually all the psychoanalysis texts ever printed, he begins to mock the illustrious psychiatrists Jerry presents to him, ridiculing them all to some degree... Until the professor, in desperation, decides to turn to an old friend, Sean (Robin Williams), a psychiatrist who had a lot of promise in his youth but then decided to abandon his academic career to care for his wife, who was terminally ill with cancer.
After a fierce and troubled exchange between Sean and the boy, the latter decides to undergo therapy. Meanwhile, Will meets Skylar (Minnie Driver), a pretty and spirited student, with whom, for the first time in his life, he embarks on a relationship based on trust and complicity. However, in this situation, Will finds himself facing conflicting stimuli and pressures: Professor Lambeau wants him to pursue a career at all costs, capitalizing on his genius and trying to lead Will down the same path he followed; on the other hand, Sean is very doubtful whether a career in mathematics is what Will truly desires and looks more toward a possible realization of the boy on a human and emotional level, aided by his relationship with Skylar. There is respect and friendship between Jerry and Sean, but also a never-subdued rancor, which will constitute an additional obstacle on the boy's path towards emancipation from the ghosts of his dark past...
The story is absolutely engaging and will have you glued to your seat. Robin Williams is immense, an Oscar for best supporting actor (well-deserved), every crease of his facial features, every slight posture of his body, is tense to evoke the inner torment of a man who has lost the love and guiding star of his life, but at the same time is proudly proud of his choices. A most noble figure of a romantic loser, he creates a true gravitational center around which the events of the other protagonists revolve. Everyone has something to reproach Sean for, everyone has something to be grateful to him for.
But it doesn't end there. Despite the memorable performances of the protagonists, it is the brilliant dialogues that are the best part of the film. Unforgettable is the second "meeting" by the lakeside, between Will and Sean, where the latter returns all the arrogance and ferocity that Will had shown in the first session, with such class, lightness, and humanity that it leaves you open-mouthed, turning the boy's assumptions inside out like a glove, laying bare the deepest recesses of his aching soul.
Another notable episode is the conversation Will has with an executive from a CIA-affiliated agency, intent on recruiting his immense mathematical genius for work in decrypting enemy codes. In his refusal, Will condenses, in a matter of minutes, a lucid and ruthless analysis of the so-called "American Dream," based on Third World exploitation, orchestrated wars, an increasing divide between rich and poor, and a purely facade internal democracy.
In conclusion, a splendid, touching film, runs like clockwork from start to finish, that does not indulge in a happy ending but leaves an open yet hopeful conclusion. As you've probably guessed, I don't just like it: I'm in love with it.
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