May 22, 2006
Nope, tis not a review on Da movie
I just watched Good Will Hunting. It was released a while back, and what prompted me to watch it was kinda incidental. I suscribe emails from about.com for a while now and i always treat it as a junkmail. For the uninitiated, about.com is a website dedicated to disseminate information just about anything; you name it, it got it. So i had their math sections mailed to me weekly. At first i thought it'll be interesting, but sad to say it didn't live to my expectations. Most of the issues they deal with are not actual math equations and such, but a mix of education issues on whether calculus should be introduced in high school for everyone to whether kids in kindergartens are having enough math syllabus out of the education system. One day thought they mailed an interesting topic that caught my eye. Math in movie. There were at least 80 movies listed, and Good Will Hunting was one of them. I thought i could try it out.
It became one of my favourite. I thought i could relate to the main character, Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon. Okay, apart from the prodigial talent in math and the dashing factor, i could relate to Will's character, ie why he can't open up to people about his feelings, why he has to lie, why despite of his name he lacks will to do what he is best at.
Some people, when being approached to talk about himself, has this defense mechanism not to tell everything truthfully because of certain incidents that happened in the past that corroded his trust in other people in conveying in what he deemed most vulnerable; his feelings, his emotions, his constant fear of hate and betrayal. The best way to avoid that is minimize contact with people, sort of acting like a recluse, but he yearns for that special someone to walk into his life too. This observation was evident in most of the elaborate and engaging conversations Will had with shrink Dr. Shawn (or Sean? i dunno) played by Robin Williams.
Will seems like a simple man with no real ambition in his life. To him, honor and respect has a broader definition; he argued that honor and respect should not be given to degree-holders and bigshot conglomerates, but also to janitors who ensure washroom users get confort from their service and mechanics who ensure regular 9-to-5ers get to their work stations on time, to name a few such 'lowly' jobs labeled by social stigma. But, he is, in fact, the most complicated man to deal with. I was rather amused by his arguments when an NSA officer asked him to give reasons not to accept the job offer as a code-breaker. He thought far and wide, in hope that he was not doing the wrong decision. No, he's not undecisive; On the contrary, he decided things pretty much on his own grounds, just that his grounds are pretty pessimistic ones. Well, probably it's apt to say he is one interesting character ever fictionalized.
Hmm.. this week is full of the Da Vinci's hype. Probably I'll watch it when all the hype dies down; maybe the theater will be a little less crowded then.
Posted by peixin at May 22, 2006 03:59 AM