As a part of the Thursday Night movie series held weekly in my friend Ernie’s dorm (aka Studio 54), I had the pleasure of watching “Good Will Hunting”, one of my favorite movies. This time watching it though, I saw the story from a different perspective after spending a few months discussing the idea of the American dream in English class. To give a very brief plot summary, the protagonist, Will Hunting, is an orphan of about twenty years old living on the south side of Boston who spends his days working as a janitor at MIT and his nights reading textbooks and novels. Will is a diamond in the rough, a self taught genius in just about every subject who conversely hangs with a tough crowd and has an extensive criminal record. His prodigious mind is discovered when he solves highly complex math problems that were left on the chalkboard for MIT graduate students to prove. At around the same time, his smarts and quick thinking also land him a girlfriend, Skylar, who is a student at Harvard. The professor who discovers Will, Gerald Lambeau, is himself a mathematical genius with numerous awards and wide notoriety in the field. Soon after, Will begins attending court-appointed meetings with a psychiatrist due to his past abuse at the hands of foster parents. His psychiatrist, Sean McGuire, who happens to be Lambeau’s former roommate at MIT, teaches at a community college and was recently widowed and like Will, is at a crossroads in his life. In short, the rest of the movie is a struggle between Sean and Lambeau to decide what is best for Will. Each of them have different views on what the American Dream is from their own past experiences, with Lambeau fixated on the Field’s medal that he won and his lucrative teaching position at the top technical college in the world. Contrastingly, Sean highlights the happiness he gained from waking up every morning next to the love of his life, teaching psychology and sharing his experiences with college students, and not ending up an arrogant prick like Lambeau despite their equal level of education. These contrasting views of the American Dream really make the viewer wonder how success is measured: awards, success, and money or happiness, companionship, and humility. Meanwhile, Will is making the decision between becoming a blue collar construction worker for life, which will allow him to stay with his friends and life safely within the life he already knows, or to follow the path of greatness that Lambeau has laid out for him. Overwhelmed and still obviously dealing with trust issues, Will breaks up with Skylar when she asks him to move to California with her. In a crucial point in the movie, Will is talking to his best friend, Chuckie, about his intentions to stay in south Boston forever with him, to which his friend replies, “If you’re still here in twenty years, I’ll fucking kill you…You’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket…I would kill to have what you have…It would be an insult to all of us here if you were still here”. Will’s desire at that point to continue to live an underprivileged life is basically the antithesis of my understanding the 21st Century American Dream. Most Americans nowadays would give anything to do as little work as possible to cash in big. Will has the chance to do that because of his crazy intellect, but wants no part in it. In the end, after Will has a breakthrough in a psychiatry session, he chooses neither south Boston nor Cambridge (MIT); instead, he chooses Sean’s version of the American Dream, pursuing love and companionship by traveling out to California to be with Skylar.
