Einstein once said that, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Will Hunting (Matt Damon), an Einsteinian genius, is nevertheless a fish who is trying to climb a tree in “Good Will Hunting”. Although he knows his mind makes him a mathematical powerhouse, he is the epitome of a self-sabotager. Those around him, especially the MIT professors who envy his ability to solve mathematical theorems with ease, wonder why Will wants to throw it all away to live in a seedy south Boston neighborhood and work as a laborer.
Will is smart, and not just with numbers. His incredible
wit is matched by his sarcastic attitude about everything. Instead of dealing
with any personal issue he’s confronted with, he’ll throw out all kinds of
facts and cynical philosophy to avoid the personal introspection needed to
answer the question. His brutal honesty about how he’s feeling and thinking is
extreme, and the walls he’s built up are high and thick. The average
psychologist is not a good fit for him, and he knows and exploits this to their
utter exasperation. It takes an equally strong personality to counter Will’s
verbal attacks, and Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) is just that man. Matching
expletive with expletive, the two verbally duke it out like the street brawlers
they grew up as.
Will’s defensiveness is hiding his wounds, and he doesn’t
even know it. It takes Sean’s style of in-his-face therapy to eventually get
Will to begin to tear down his walls, to admit his pain. It’s only then that
Will sees the bigger picture, and that he was stuck in an endless,
self-destructive cycle that kept him from the fulfilling life that he wanted.
He finally realized that he was a fish meant to swim in the water, not scale a
tree.
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