I think Good Will Hunting should've won 5 additional Oscars aside from the Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor ones it rightfully deserved. The other Oscars I think it should've won are:
Best Picture- Lawrence Bender
Best Director- Gus Van Sant
Best Actor- Matt Damon
Best Supporting Actress- Minnie Driver
Best Original Score- Danny Elfman
Best Original Song- Elliott Smith.
I feel the whole film itself is a more relatable film, as the characters feel like real people, not that the other nominees of the other films don't feel that way, but the characters feel like real people in the film, because of the way they were written and acted in the film.
Bender was able to help finance the movie to look as real as the film should be in the setting it's in, and Van Sant was able to translate Damon and Affleck's great script into a work of genius. Show his view of the script, by being faithful to it, but putting his unique touch into the film.
I feel that Matt Damon's Will Hunting was the best actor of 1997. Will is a character that seems like anyone could know him, we all may not know a Will Hunting in our lives, but there are probably some out there. Someone who's a genius at something, like writing, painting, music, acting, or in this case math. He's someone who is very real and could very well exist, as there are men, or perhaps women, who have a certain talent, but don't want to use the gift they have, such as the case with Will, as he's either afraid of leaving the close boundaries and friends he's used to, just doesn't feel anything will come out of the gift he's got, doesn't want things to change or all of the above.
He also seems to be complex as there's a lot we know about him. Yes, he likes hanging around his friends, is smart at math and used to work at as a janitor at MIT, then works construction, while he goes to see a therapist, and that is a lot. But there's a lot about him that makes him a very complex character as well.
Like, we know he's an orphan, and went through foster homes and got beaten a lot, so he's both psychologically and physically damaged, and as a result of all this, according to his wrap sheet, he steals things, gets into fights and has been arrested and was able to avoid jail, due to his great knowledge. But his luck with that does run out and is put in a particular situation. He eventually chooses to do equations with a professor and see a therapist, Sean Maguire, played by a fantastic Robin Williams, instead of doing time.
Will also is afraid of commitment to others, like girls. He pushes them away before they can push him away, like Robin Williams' Sean said: It's a defense mechanism that comes out when things in a relationship start to become serious and to avoid being rejected, as he was from his parents, he leaves them, so that he doesn't get hurt and that is what I think is the essence of Will Hunting.
All of this makes Will Hunting a very complicated character that will be remembered in years to come, and should be studied, I think, for anyone who wants to become an actor just to see the complexity of a character.
Minnie Driver was fantastic as Skylar, Will's girlfriend as she challenges his smarts and tries to get him to come out of his safe zone and do things he wouldn't dare to do before he met her. In the end, she wants him to come to California with her, but he's scared that she will get bored with him and leave him, and he's there with someone who doesn't love him like he loves her. So he breaks up with her, and she is heartbroken and tries to have him reconsider staying home in Boston as they talk, by trying to have him say he loves her.
It doesn't work, but he does eventually go to California to her with the combined efforts of Sean, her and Chuckie, who talked to him saying he wished he would get to Will's door and he knock and Will isn't there. There's no goodbye, no note, nothing. And in the end that's what happens. And Driver plays the part amazingly as someone, who's smart and witty and is able to hold her own against someone like Will. To an extant with being around someone like Will.
The music, and the song is included, fit perfectly with the film. Danny Elfman's score is a score that has the sound and feel of genius as well as the loneliness the characters, Will and Sean feels. The score also has a more gritty feel, in terms of sadness and loneliness that's shown in the film, that comes to light whenever the score is heard at any time in the film.
The song, Miss Misery by Elliot Smith, has the feel of a man, who is lonely and has had some problems with his life.
While people said it's mostly about Smith, which is true, it also fits with Will's character of loneliness and sadness he's felt his life and is summed up with the song, Miss Misery, also a metaphor for both Smith and Hunting when it comes representing the darkness from which, Smith and in the film Hunting attempts to extricate from themselves.
This is all my interpretation and feel free to disagree with what I've written here about this, but this is all why I feel Good Will Hunting is the best film of '97 and should've gotten more awards than it did. But again, awards don't always mean everything.
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