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Synopsis:
20-year-old Will Hunting (Matt Damon) of South Boston has a genius-level intellect but chooses to work as a janitor at MIT and spend his free time with his friend Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck). When famous mathematician Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) posts a difficult problem taken from algebraic graph theory as a challenge for his graduate students to solve, Will solves the problem quickly but anonymously.
Will meets Skylar (Minnie Driver), a British student about to graduate from Harvard University and pursue a graduate degree at Stanford University School of Medicine
in California.
Will is faced with incarceration after assaulting a man who had bullied him as a child. Lambeau arranges for Will to forgo jail time if he agrees to study mathematics under Lambeau's supervision and to see a therapist. Will agrees, but treats his first few therapists with contempt and they refuse to work with him. In desperation, Lambeau calls on Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), his estranged college roommate who also grew up in South Boston and now teaches psychology at Bunker
Hill Community College. Unlike the other therapists, Sean pushes back at Will and overcomes his defense mechanisms, and after a few unproductive sessions Will begins to open up.
Cultural restraints are inherently placed on Will. He is from a lower social class, raised in the slums of South Boston. He cannot afford the education that he would benefit from significantly more so than some of the richer kids who attend MIT and Harvard.
An overarching theme in this movie is the idea that power and agency in our society is accomplished through education. Although Will may be a genius, most will never look at him as anymore than a thug because of his lack of education. The MIT students, who may not be as intelligent as Will, will always have a higher place in society. Will's childhood is what prevented him from pursuing a college education when in reality, this education is wasted on some people much less intelligent than Will.
Will grows up in Boston around MIT and Harvard students and decides that attending these places does not give you agency, despite societal views.
Will may be more intelligent and more witty than other Harvard and MIT students, but agency comes with self worth. Self worth is what inherently gives others agency.
Will defies this social structure which says that in order to be a respected member of society, one must invest in a college education.
Superficial knowledge vs. first hand experience
Will derides the MIT and Harvard students for memorizing novels and spitting out the information to try to belittle others. Will does not realize that he does the same. In one scene, Will criticizes a painting of Sean's and tries to apply his critique and make meaning of the way Sean is himself. Sean gets offended and emphasizes the agency associated with personal first hand experience. This is the first time that Sean actually gets through to Will.
Societal pressures are applied to Will by Professor Lambeau, who forces him to solve problems day after day. Will does not see the enjoyment in this and finds it hard to live a satisfying life. Will does not appreciate the mathematical proofs that he is able to solve like Lambeau does and Lambeau finds it hard to live with the idea that Will is so smart but does not live up to his full potential.
SEAN: Well, are you going out again?
WILL: I don't know.
SEAN: Why not?
WILL: Haven't called her.
SEAN: Jesus Christ, you are an amateur. (Inexperience)
WILL: . . . You don't get it, she did everything right. Right now
she's perfect, I don't want to ruin that.
Will hides behind sarcasm and his insecurities caused by an abusive childhood. Once Sean cracks this and gets passed Will's problems, Will can finally live a happy life. He does not live up to his full potential but is scared to do so because of the threat of failure. Sean points out that Will is so adept at anticipating future failure
in his interpersonal relationships that he deliberately sabotages them in order to avoid the risk of emotional pain. But in the end, Sean is finally able to convince Will of his self-worth and subsequent value to others.
In the end, Will realizes that he can live happily doing the things he wants to in life. Despite Lambeau's pushes to continue with mathematics, Sean knows that Will could never be anything like Lambeau. Once Sean frees Will from the problems that his abusive childhood had caused him, he gains self worth and goes off to California to be with Skylar. Not knowing what will come of this drastic move, we can see that Will is no longer afraid of failure. Will is finally striving to gain those real life experiences that Sean and him discussed in the park.