“You'll never have that kind of relationship in a world where you're afraid to take the first step because all you see is every negative thing ten miles down the road.”

One thing that I don’t think I will ever understand is how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the screenplay for this when they were only in their early twenties. It’s genuinely one of the best screenplays I’ve ever seen, with Shawshank Redemption-level writing in its setup and payoff. It’s also a film that hit way harder for me on second viewing.

What amazes me so much about the screenplay for Good Will Hunting is how personal it really is, because it reflects being written by someone who has probably had several decades of life experience, which, funny enough, ties into the story. I’ve only ever cried once during a movie, and this film was able to get me pretty close simply by just how close to home it all felt. There is true life advice here, and both of the main leads, Will, the young and brilliant man whose problem isn’t not what having it takes to get there, but not simply wanting to get there at all. Sean, the therapist, on the other hand, is a character who is also very smart and has clearly been hurt on the inside throughout his life.

I want to talk about both characters first because I think they are both super essential to a movie like this, and I’ll start off with Will. Straight from the get-go, you wonder why on Earth he isn’t already super successful, which adds intrigue to his character. His character isn’t just intriguing, but really deep. From the way that he interacts with people to just him being incredibly arrogant, you wonder what had to have happened to him to get him to that point. I’m not going to spoil whether or not this gets revealed in the movie, because it’s got to be one of the best things about it.

Sean is also an absolutely fantastic character, not only because he is played by Robin Williams, but because he reflects Will in a lot of ways. As I said, both of them are geniuses, but don’t really want that typical path that, say, Stellan Skarsgård’s character, Gerald, an award-winning professor, has. His life is so emblematic of your “usual” person. The other thing that makes him interesting, and this is yet again another thing I have to be careful with because of not wanting to get into spoiler territory, is how his therapy sessions with Will sort of become ironic in a way. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

As far as acting goes, yet again, Good Will Hunting delivers in spades. It’s super, and I mean super dialogue-heavy, but the dialogue between characters is so interesting that you never really care, and how the actors interact with one another is on an entirely different level. The interactions with Will and the other people his age feel so incredibly realistic despite having a bit of a cinematic touch and flair to them. On top of that, they are also the most fun and hilarious parts of the movie.

The interactions between the adults and each other, as well as Will, are entirely different. As I said earlier, they reflect a deeper part of life and hit so close, almost too close to home, in a lot of ways. Skarsgård’s Gerald and Williams’s Sean have several deep conversations about what life can, but not only should be about. Gerald became incredibly successful, but doesn’t really seem to reflect the type of person who has ever had any real deep connections with people, while Sean settled for a simpler life, but has basically lived it all. On top of that, the therapy sessions between Will and Sean are the best parts of the whole movie, so I won’t even begin to talk about that because I think you should go in blind there. They are some of the best conversations in film history, in my opinion, of course.

The last thing I wanted to say is kind of just a thing that stood out to me, and it’s the fact that this movie was able to achieve all of its emotional poignancy without really using all that much music at all. Yeah, sure, there is some here and there, but for the most part, and I really do mean the most part, the movie is silent and reflective, really letting you sit and breathe with the characters, as cheesy as that sounds. It’s one of the best movies that I’ve ever seen that doesn’t really ever, if at all, honestly, use music to elevate the emotions.

Good Will Hunting is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and is a must-watch for not only film lovers, but everyone, in my opinion. Just go in knowing there’s a lot of language.