His I.Q. easily matches the brains of anyone there. But he's pushing broom. Alone at night in the corridors, he spots a complex math problem posted on a whiteboard outside a professor's office. It's stumped M.I.T.'s best grad students. Will licks his lips and solves it in an instant.
The math prof (Stellan Skarsgaard) tracks Will down and, recognizing genius, seeks to cultivate it. Will, who is entirely self-taught, has managed to absorb libraries of learning as easily as most people breathe. But he's never let his head grow beyond the narrow scope of south Boston and his friends, including Chuckie (Ben Affleck), the kind of guy you want around when there's a six-pack to crack open.
Will's problem is simple: He can't be a genius without losing his sense of who he is and where he belongs. He overcompensates by fighting in bars, getting probation, and being hauled to a psychologist's office. The shrink, played by Robin Williams, was the college roommate of the M.I.T. prof who's interested in Will. Williams' character has his own love-hate relationship to success. Despite his brilliance, he said no to the academic all stars and buried his light in a Boston community college.
Half the drama in "Good Will Hunting" depends on this forced relationship. Will shrugs his shoulders. Robin the shrink tells us about how lousy his life has been and lets his lip quiver at important moments. It's one of those on-screen therapies in which the therapist 's problems are more deeply-rooted problems than the patient's. Williams has played this role before in "Awakenings" and "Dead Again."
Matt Damon is better than the part. We're asked to believe that Will is a genius and that he's OK with a life spent as a construction laborer. His friend Chuckie, no great genius, sees through this. With a head big enough to hold Einstein and Leibnitz, Will is happy to get up in the morning, make a brown bag lunch, and spend the day mixing mortar. His resentments are more interesting. He's got a grudge against anyone with the brains or skill to escape the kind of dead end job he's got.
All of this comes across as a fantasy about working class life. The screenplay, which Damon co-wrote with Affleck, wobbles back to reality, movie style. Will's intensity lights attracts a beautiful Harvard undergrad (Minnie Driver) who has problems dealing with somebody so smart and so mixed up. But giving Will a girlfriend who loves him for what he is, brains and all, helps solve several plot problems and drives "Good Will Hunting" toward a conclusion which is made to seem more ambiguous than it really is.
Director Gus Van Sant, whose early movies were imbued with an outlaw sensibility ("Drugstore Cowboy"), has been moving from the fringe to the center. His last movie, the Nicole Kidman satire "To Die For," seemed more daring than it turned out to be. "Good Will Hunting" is even less challenging. But it's an entertaining mixture of character drama and comedy.