“Hey, do you like apples?”; with this line, Good Will Hunting won me over completely. Despite its unfortunate advertisement of its executive producer Harvey Weinstein, Hunting is decidedly good right from its opening credits. With an all star cast including young Matt Damon, both the Affleck brothers, Stellan Skarsgård, Minnie Driver, and of course Robin Williams, there is no wonder that Hunting has a spot on the Top 100 movies of all time. For me, laying in a hotel bed the night before a college admissions event, no movie felt more fitting than that of the story of Will Hunting (Damon). A young “Southie”  Boston man with a genius-level IQ, Hunting works at the prestigious MIT—as a janitor. Hunting was born into an opportunity deficit: a low-income upbringing, a propensity for fighting, and a gang of goon-esque friends to boot. After he proves not only one, but two awesomely difficult theorems, and after he assaults a police officer, Hunting attracts the attention of applied theories professor Lambeau (Skarsgård). In order to avoid further jail time, Hunting agrees to Lambeau’s offer of mathematical rendezvous’ and therapy. Enter: Robin Williams as therapist Sean Maguire. From here, the movie escalates in both emotional and situational intensity. In order not to spoil the movie, though I am sure you have seen it, I will not go into any more detail about the plot, just know that I loved everything about it.

    What affected me most about the quality of this film was the acting. Stellar performances were delivered all around, particularly by Damon, Williams, and the Afflecks (particularly Casey, in my opinion). The continuity of the young actors’s thick Boston accents to the intelligence lurking behind the eyes of Damon’s character every time he interacts with a mathematical equation, or another like-minded individual. Congruently, the writing is superb. Snappy, smart, and real, never do the interactions seem canned or forced. This movie won the Oscar for original screenplay, and it deserves every ounce of the accolades it has been given. The interplay between the actors and the script is flawless, with every motivation explored and every character fleshed out to their full capacity. The janitor is also a genius with intense anger issues resulting from childhood trauma.

    The camera work is simple, yet effective. The color scheme is muted, which reflects the gloomy south-end Boston atomsphere. The colleges, MIT and Bunker Hill Community College alike, are portrayed as sterile, with the exception of Maguire’s office, which is filled with “the wrong books” and paintings that mix “linear and impressionistic” styles in ways that baffle Hunting upon first exposure. The scenes in the bars where Hunting is with his friends, or with Skylar his love interest, is when the colors are most vibrant. The use of shifting focus during long takes emphasizes which character should be focused on at that specific moment, which is helpful for all the interactive subtleties present in the narrative. I would recommend this movie to anyone and everyone, as long as they are over the age of 13, as there is adult content and plenty of swearing. The artistry displayed in Hunting is cinematography and storytelling at its finest. To answer Wills Hunting’s boastful question, I most definitely “like them apples”.