Good Will Hunting is an excellent film. Everyone says so- all of the film reviews and best movie countdowns put this movie on their best 100 films list. For a blog about higher ed, can you get a better movie? It takes place at MIT, an institute of higher learning, with a professor and his old college roommate. Skylar, Minnie Driver's character, attends Harvard and we even see her doing homework at her residence hall room. It also includes the student affairs parts of the field with Robin Williams in an Oscar winning role as a counselor who works with Matt Damon's character Will.
The best part of this movie for me is that two childhood friends got together and wrote the movie. And it takes place in their childhood town, South Boston. Then they star in it and win a bunch of awards. That is really pretty cool.
For those of you who have not seen the film, it is about Will Hunting who is working as janitor at MIT and solves a ridiculously difficult math problem left on a chalk board because he happens to be a mathematical genius. He has struggled with his own demons from a childhood and past that has affected his everyday life. He finds himself in legal trouble because he is one scrappy lad. Well the MIT professor impressed with Will's skills and bails him out on the condition he solves math problems all day and gets some therapy. You can imagine the type of guy Will is- he don't need no stinking therapy. He don't need no body or no thing. He does not want to leave the comfort of his friends in Southie or use any of that inherent math skill for a career. He is afraid of letting anyone in. Well he finds a strong source of support in his mandatory counselor Sean played by the wonderful actor Robin Williams. Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck round out the main cast and along with Robin they are all so at home in the world of Boston.
In the movie we see Will find out things about himself and what he wants out of life. You see the rich relationships that change him and you also see the impact that people can have one another. Luckily and conveniently these things in this film involve a professor and a counselor who have been roommates while in college and they have great conversations about different types of students and what success is defined as-then you have a girl who attends college as well and she has her own struggles with her definition of success and attaining it. As college seems to serve as the playground for this wonderful film about love, support, and happiness it makes sense that RAs would want to use this film in their programming. I read something somewhere that said TV shows and movies that are exclusively about college life are not successful as the majority of the American public can not relate to a traditional four year college experience.
Movies like Good Will Hunting take place in the college environment but it is supplemental to the story, not essential. Plus any college student who sees Skylar's residence hall room at Harvard know right away that is is just a movie. No one's residence halls are that nice, not even Harvard. But I was pleased that Skylar took advantage of living on campus even though as a senior I do not think it is required. :)
To plan a program here I would talk about success and how everyone has their own definition. For Professor Lambeau it was to be a Field's Medal winner and a math genius (well until he meets Will-but you have to watch the movie!) and for Sean it was the love of his wife and that relationship that changed his life. Will's "coming of age" moments help him to define what he considers his success. Not everyone that is living in our halls and attending class together will have the same path and the same way that they define their successes and the stress of trying to learn that about oneself in those four short years is hard enough. Why not have a program where you we take a minute to stop feeling the stress of defining success and remind ourselves of the people, relationships, and the stuff that makes us happy right now. That is most likely going to remain part of our future success and it will do all of us some good to remember those things.
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