“Most days I wish I’d never met you ’cause then I could sleep at night. I didn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there was someone like you out there. I didn’t have to watch you throw it all away” – Gerald Lambeau in Good Will Hunting

I don’t know why but I didn’t rate Good Will Hunting the first time I saw it. Maybe I was all out of films about instinctive mathematical geniuses and therapists; maybe the cheesy pun in the title didn’t help (the leading protagonist is called Will Hunting), but my money is on the analysis of juvenile delinquency that reminded me in patches of Gee, Officer Krupke from West Side Story. There is an aura of worthiness that director Gus Van Sant doesn’t quite manage to excise.

But since this was neither fair nor true, a reflective revisit followed by a review was essential. After all, the late Robin Williams won his only Oscar for this number, even if there are aspects to his character (Sean Maguire) comparable to other neo-saintly roles (Dr Malcolm Sayer in Awakenings, for example.)  Not just Williams though – look at that glittering cast:  Damon, Affleck, Affleck, Skarsgård, Driver… more talent than you can shake a stick at, all happy to play in an ensemble effort

OK I admit it, I was wrong. This is actually a deeply absorbing film, all the more loved since Williams’s death in 2014.  Loved, you might say, in the same way that Shawshank Redemption is loved – initially with a cult following but increasingly mainstream to the point where it was voted 53rd most favourite film of all time by The Hollywood Reporter.

The critics were kind too, but that’s for the rather better reason that the script (written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, reputedly with help from William Goldman and Damon’s ex-girlfriend Skylar Satenstein) is warm, funny, emotionally engaging and does promote deeper analysis – the sort of film an audience might continue to think through long after the closing titles.

Equally, all the performances hit the spot, though my favourite is unquestionably the Professor of Maths Gerald Lambeau, played with understated empathy and intelligence by a brooding Skarsgård.  Lambeau (along with the camera) is the only person who recognises the latent genius of university janitor Hunting, an orphaned boy from the sort of south-side (Boston’s rump end) upbringing where you fought to get anything – hence a lengthy police record.

Lambeau it is who turns up in court and gets the eloquent but nihilistic Hunting off a jail term for assault by agreeing with the judge two conditions:  that he spend one session a week honing his mathematical skills, and another with a therapist.

Unsurprisingly Hunting is less keen on the latter idea, which he demonstrates by mocking each of the worthy psychologists to whom he is presented as a pro bono case in turn, recognising their respective Achilles heels.  Williams’s Maguire is the last turn of the dice, the last favour Lambeau can call in from his college pals and academic colleagues, maybe last because he is the most sensitive and vulnerable of all.

The relationship between Hunting and Maguire is complex, layered, goes through phases as the two square up then fall into an intense bond.  Critics referred to the development as “predictable” though no more so than a million other films.  After all, it’s a comparatively recent innovation for Hollywood to start playing with ambiguity and unresolved relationships.

Both actors reflect the layers of the onion skin beautifully.  In their first meeting, Hunting ignores the warning and has one pop at Maguire’s late wife too many.  Maguire grabs Hunting by the throat, then lets him go when a hint of contrition is shown.  “I will END YOU. I will fucking END YOU!” he says.

The picture above of Williams in a yellow shirt shows the expression on the psychologist’s face and captures the inner thoughts to perfection: he has failed by allowing a patient to get to him, yet he recognises in the boy the same loneliness that he has felt, pictured in the painting he is looking at.  It features a lone figure in a boat out at sea.  To do this scene right without it appearing twee or over-emoted takes skill.  It contributed to the Williams Oscar with significance

Of course, this relationship is not everything in the film.  Hunting’s relationship with his California-bound Harvard-graduate girl (Skylar, natch) is another aspect, as is the rapid-fire analysis the boy can switch on at a moment’s notice, culminating in a close-up monologue to the NSA as the try to recruit him, explaining why he would not want to work for them (see at the bottom of this review.)

It boils down to a voyage around the subject of genius, about how it cannot explain itself, how it just is and cannot be forced down any route and harnessed for a particular purpose.  There has to be motivation, and if, as Dr Maguire eloquently puts it, that genius can only see the negatives, never the naive positives that keep lesser mortals hunting for aspiration of success.

This might be regarded as a negative message, though the overall tone of the movie is by no means relentlessly downbeat.  After being signed off from his community service order, Will works in construction, but with help from the good Professor he signs up to a job at a uni.

But then, contrary to expectations, Will follows his girl to California for a shot at… who knows, but something, some direction to his otherwise aimless intellect.    Send ’em away on a high, Van Sant must have said to himself, though the idea for the ending apparently came from Goldman.

Second time around, I warmed to the characters and the film.  Who knows, by the third viewing I might even be raving about Good Will Hunting, but don’t hold your breath just yet!

Will:  Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’, ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.