Good Will Hunting: The Loneliness of Genius - And the Call to Service that All Genius Receive
It was the Happiest of Times, it was the Worst of Times…
One of the strange things that happened in University for me, was the discovery of the 1995 movie of Good Will Hunting. The discovery came at a difficult and boring time in life, and yet one that was good at the same time.
But in all this there was a loneliness and a boredom. That’s when Good Will Hunting appeared, and it was a movie that at once struck a chord and left an impression.
Will Hunting is a character played by Matt Damon, one who symbolizes the infinite potential of youth, and is someone who is lonely, bored and angry. All of which are trademarks of the classic genius. In a lot of ways, he seems like a ‘dumber version’ of a number of 19th and 20th century high IQ Americans and yet still he blazes with an undeniable energy and brilliance.
Why is this?
Simple; he burns with a vitality and a passion and intelligence that terrifies and horrifies those around him.
In a lot of ways this is the reason this is a favourite film of mine. The movie tackles just what it means to be smarter than most other people, so that one might say that it is a good character study of also Michael Crichten, the greatest ‘techno-thriller’ author there likely has ever been.
Where other men might well struggle with math, science, with literature and history, Will does not. But it must be acknowledged what sort of genius he is; he is the sort who has a perfect memory for what he reads (in spite of what he says), with his strength being in the more scientific and mathematical arts.
The trouble with him is the evident autistic need for routine that has left him stunted and unfulfilled and his self-destructive tendencies. Oddly enough this is highly reminiscent of men such as Ludwig Van Beethoven, who was fairly self-destructive at times and yet utterly kind and loving to those around him so that he was mourned for by all who knew him.
Will is kind underneath it but his intelligence makes him hard to love. Why? Because people are envious, people are short-sighted and people don’t appreciate him.
How could they love him? How could they even understand him when none of them could even appreciate the man’s depth? His three best mates might love him and worship him as they would a god, because of his gifts and that he combines good looks, their sort of background but with a ‘winning lottery ticket’ as Chuck his best friend puts it that none of them could ever hope to cash in.
This more than anything else is the reason for his loneliness.
The Price of Genius
The cost of being a ‘Great Man’ is an intolerable loneliness. An intolerable isolation from humanity even as you crave to be accepted and part of it. Every single genius has known this hunger and this pain. None of them are an exception to this rule.
This is the movie’s ultimate commentary; if you’re to be gifted in a field so high and far above all other mortals than you’ll never truly belong on some level amongst them. The reason being is quite simple; you were destined for greater things. It is a sad Truth. Will is not meant to work in a construction job, he was meant to do math-equations.
But his journey is one that is about acceptance of this fact. Achilles is alone as the greatest of heroes after Herakles, and struggles just as Will does. This is his fate, he must learn to embrace it.
The trouble with Will though is that he’s for a time contented to remain with just his genius, rather than driving out there to make something of himself. This is the precise problem that his mentor Sean Deguire (played by Williams) points out. He comments that he ought to see the Hagia Sophia, ought to seek beauty and ought to make a life for himself.
Too many geniuses have been lost to modernity. Too many of them have been lost. Rubbed out and scrubbed out by the anti-creative force of our time that we call ‘modernity’. It has little in the way of love or interest in the good that men might produce if their genius was nurtured.
This is the problem with young Will. It is what fuels his destructive tendencies, it is what causes him to be reluctant to stake it all, and it is arguably the problem with his refusal to take up Lambert’s offers.
The price of genius as one can see in these times is a steep one. It is one in which you have to look others who long to have what you have in the eye, know that they wish for what you have even as you are cast out, exiled and despised by the very system that they can swim along in.
The greatest of chess-geniuses was hounded out of the Chess-playing world, the finest of writers have been barred from publishing and the greatest of inventors go on ignored in favour of H1bs and other fools that the elites love.
Will’s impatience towards the system is natural and understandable. In particular towards the end of the movie when he is asked why wouldn’t he want to work for it?
This scene shows the problem with Genius. It comes with a price but also a certain responsibility. Sure, you must serve your nation but also bear in mind the consequences of you doing your job too well as Will puts it.
He could make a killing (in many ways) as a code-breaker for the military/NSA. But at what cost? He has his immortal soul to think of. What do I mean by this? I mean even if you aren’t a Christian that you need to bear in mind that actions have consequences. That you kill someone, even if you don’t pay the price for it someone else will, that you will lose something as a result and will have committed a crime. You will under this context have cost a fellow American his livelihood, many others their lives and Mid-Easterners & Africans their lives and facilitated the process of replacement of Europeans & Americans all in one fell swoop.
For some this isn’t a problem, but for a true Genius it is a problem.
The Green-Eyed Gaze of Others…
All throughout the film you have characters who look at Will with jealousy. What is most interesting is that most point to Lambeau, or Sean, or even Chucky in my experience and sure you can.
But there’s better examples. Such as Lambeau’s assistant who in a deleted scene complains bitterly about how ungrateful Will is. And Will’s response? He just takes it. He even seems downcast.
The guy is a complete stranger in some ways. Yet his behaviour doesn’t amuse, Will doesn’t fire back and just seems more a vulnerable child. The reason is that he has no desire to abuse or otherwise criticize the other man. Simply put he has no right to. The other guy has worked and toiled his entire life to become Lambeau’s assistant, so that he’s only a few years older than Will and yet has none of his genius and never will have it.
The man has to live with that. But on the same token jealous as he is of the boy’s bond with the Professor, and his mathematical comprehension, he could never understand what it is to be Will. To have the burden that Will has. The burden to carry humanity’s understanding forward.
Skylar is also jealous. So much so that at several points she says ‘I don’t understand’ or ‘I’m not like you’ and there’s a thin trace of resentment under her voice. She loves Will, but it is because she wishes to be him and not being him is killing her. She wants him, because he like with Lambeau’s assistant is everything she could never be but wishes that she was.
His instinctive understanding of the technology that fuels medicine is incomparable. She has to study to understand the barest level of it while he just reads the basics and immediately grasps and even understands how to improve it.
Skylar is smart. But in comparison to him she’s an utter imbecile, or even a monkey playing with sticks. It is akin to the likes of Ajax the Lesser aping at being Odysseus. It’s utterly laughable and could never be. Could the likes of Hecuba or Andromache ever outfox the genius of Greek Myths or Herakles? Never.
Could joe-schmoe ever produce music like that of Beethoven? Could some backwater African ever write like Shakespeare? Never.
The thing about Skylar though is that she’s not some rando, from a third world nation but a girl who has studied all her life to get into Harvard, and then into another medical school. Yet here is Will just sitting there mocking her, and telling her with only a glance at her text book how to do her homework.
The difference is that she wishes to be him, so that she might improve her lot in life. All while Will wishes he could be a midwit or regular human being so that he might fit in. Thing is that his struggle with those equations are what and who he is. Run from that and he runs from himself.
Skylar cannot understand him on an intellectual level so she attempts to reach him emotionally. This backfires initially but at least she realizes that she cannot compare with him and attempts to reach out in some other fashion.
This tension between her discomfort with his genius, and his frustration with her inability to understand, and also her resentment is one of the most important and interesting plot points in the movie. Still he is patient with her, he waits for her to catch up and he attempts to put himself out there, it is only when the bond gets emotional that his childhood problems rear their hideous problems.
Mentors
This is the other major problem. Will’s mentors are two very diverging personalities. We have the more masculine Gerry Lambeau who is full of jealousy for the boy yes, but also a hunger to see him succeed and do better than him.
In a lot of ways Lambeau is one of the most underrated characters in the film as he’s a victim of his own success. A successful man he has chosen however career over personal happiness so that he’s become lost and disconnected from those he loves such as his surrogate brother Sean.
The man however is trying to do two things at once for this reason; repair the broken bond between them, using Will to do this and also trying to make Will a better man than him. He exhausts all his links, connections and friendships for Will, basically ruining himself for the son he never had.
Will throws it in his face.
This is the cruellest thing he does in the film. Abusing Skylar after months of her snippy comments and jealous remarks, taking Chucky’s friendship for granted is one thing but Lambeau is a man who never made remarks. Sure he was envious, but he decided to use his envy as fuel to push Will, to support him and to help him. In the process he broke himself.
This is where Will fails and in the office scene with Sean near the end he realizes it and is full of shame for it. He let his own personal crap and resentments get the better of him and wound the person who truly cared for him.
Lambeau isn’t a villain. He’s not even an antagonist if you think about it. He supported Will’s genius and at the end even arranged one last job for Will, and will likely in the epilogue arrange a new gig for him. Why? Because this is who he is; he cleans up after Will with the same stout loyalty and love that Chuck does.
Where others are horrified and disgusted by the Genius, Lambeau represents the sort of mentor or parent that wishes to bask in the brilliance of their child/student. He wants it so badly that he comes to neglect the emotional and spiritual needs of his charge. Oddly, I find him a more fascinating mentor in some ways than Sean and think he should have gotten more scenes as he was truly interesting.
That said, he’s got a bad rap for some reason. He’s a lonely cat-lady of sorts who still has a chance for redemption though, and that’s what his arc is about; redemption.
As to Sean. He’s oddly the first person who doesn’t envy Will. This is the compelling element, and he’s the only person in the movie whom if he was offered the boy’s genius would run screaming the other way. This is why Will loves him.
He’s the only one who gets it. He’s the only one who understands the price. But he also understands something like Lambeau that with ‘Great Genius comes a Great Duty’ the trouble is that Sean.
But where Lambeau thinks the problems that Will faces will resolve themselves, and there’s nothing to worry Sean has the opposite view. He’s certain that Will’s about to unravel and that he should do so when there’s family around and that they must help him to heal his wounds.
Sean seeks to heal the spiritual and emotional wounds, Lambeau dismisses them. Will needs both mentors; one to heal and one to teach him the English tradition of the thick upper lip, to learn to deal with things.
One teaches him to love himself. The other to soldier on and the importance of duty. Because with Genius comes the duty to use it. It is a call to service.
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