Gus van Sant – Movie Musings

Therapy saves the day in this well-written and acted, but rather earnest drama

Director: Gus van Sant

Cast: Matt Damon (Will Hunting), Robin Williams (Dr Sean Maguire), Ben Affleck (Chuckie Sullivan), Stellan Skarsgård (Professor Gerald Lambeau), Minnie Driver (Skylar), Casey Affleck (Morgan O’Mally), Cole Hauser (Billy McBride), John Mighton (Tom), Scott Williams Winters (Clark)

Two unknowns, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, made a sensation in 1997 with their script for Good Will Hunting. It turned them into stars and the two youngest Oscar-winning screenwriters in history. Good Will Hunting is a heartfelt, very genuine film crammed with finely scripted scenes and speeches. It’s also an unashamed crowd-pleaser, a paean to friendship and opening your heart, all washed down with a bit of Hollywood-psychotherapy magic. It’s a basically familiar tale, told and performed with such energy that it made a huge impact on millions of viewers.

In Boston, orphan Will Hunting (Matt Damon) has a fiery temper and a rap sheet as long as your arm. He’s content shooting the breeze with best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck), but he is also a preternatural genius, an autodidact with a photographic memory able to solve complex theoretical problems in hundreds of fields. It’s why he effortlessly solves the impossible proof Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) pins up on a board at MIT, where Will works as a janitor. Lambeau is stunned, bailing out Will from his recent clash with the police – on condition he also sees a psychiatrist to resolve his anger management. Will reluctantly attends sessions with Lambeau’s old room-mate Dr Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), a recent widower – and the two of them slowly grow a father-son bond, while Lambeau pushes Will to not waste his talents.

Good Will Hunting is directed with a sensitive intimacy by Gus van Sant, with the camera frequently placed in careful two-shot, medium and close-up to bring these characters up-close with the audience. It’s an emotional story of grief, unspoken rage and trauma – but it manages to largely not present these in a sentimental or overly manipulative way. It’s gentle, patient and tender with its characters, not shying away from their rough edges, with an empathy for their wounded hearts.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Will himself. Matt Damon gives a charismatic, emotionally committed performance, as utterly convincing in genius as he is a surly, fragile young man hiding emotional trauma. He’s charming and easy to root for. He takes down smarmy Harvard types with a barrage of erudite opinions, is often self-deprecating, fiercely loyal to his friends and categorically on the side of the little guy. But he’s also aggressive, rude and capable of violence. He gets into fights for no reason, arrogantly assumes he can understand everyone better than they can themselves, and uses his intelligence as a weapon to pin-point and apply pressure to weak points.

It’s what he does throughout the film, from launching attacks at prospective therapists (accusing an illustrious MIT professor of suppressed homosexuality and mockingly supplying a string of psychobabble cliches to another) to cruelly exposing the limits of Lambeau’s intellect (which the professor is all too aware of, having to work night and day to even touch Will’s starting point). He analyses and strips down insecurities with dazzling displays of verbiage. It’s funny when he recounts doing this to an NSA recruiter: it’s less so when he reduces girlfriend Skylar to tears as she tries to get close to him, cruelly breaking down her life and personality into digestible, cliched clumps.

It’s all about pain of course. Good Will Hunting is rooted in the familiar Hollywood cliché of inner pain only being “fixed” by therapy. As always in Hollywood, sessions start with confrontation and end with a tear-filled hug as breakthroughs (that in real life take years) are hit after a dozen sessions. Will of course is using his intelligence to fuel his defensiveness – abandoned and poorly treated throughout his childhood, he pushes people away before they can get to close and holds the few people he trusts as tightly as he can. He can’t believe people want to help or care for him: Lambeau must be jealous, Skylar must be lying about loving him, Dr Maguire must be a fool.

It’s Dr Maguire who sees the lost little boy under the domineering, intellectually aggressive, angry exterior. Robin Williams won a well-deserved Oscar for a part tailor-made to his strengths. Maguire is witty, eccentric, cuddly – but also, like many of William’s best parts, fragile, tender and kind. It’s a part that allows Williams to combine his emotive acting and comic fire: he can mix grief-filled reflections on the weeping sore that is the loss of his wife, with hilarious flights of fancy on her late night farting (yup that’s Damon laughing for real in those scenes). Maguire is no push-over though: he throttles Will when he goes too far mocking the memory of his wife and gets into furious arguments with Lambeau over their differing opinions on what’s best for Will.

That’s the film’s other major thread: male friendship. Will’s friendship with Chuckie is the film’s key romance, and Benn Affleck gives a generous, open-hearted performance (although one scene of fast-talking cool when Chuckie stands in for Will at a job interview feels like a scene purely written to give Affleck “a moment”). Both these guys are fiercely loyal to each other – but it’s Chuckie who knows Will is wasting gifts and opportunities he would die to have, and who loves his friend so much he wants him to leave. Refreshingly, the slacker friends aren’t holding Will back here (he’s doing that himself) – they care so much they are trying to push him away.

If the film has a weakness, it’s the romance plotline, which feels like a forced narrative requirement to give Will something to “earn”. Minnie Driver does a decent job as a spunky, cool Harvard student – the sort of dream girl who quotes poetry but also tells smutty gags to Will’s mates – but she feels like an end-of-the-rainbow reward. Their relationship is underwritten and she bends over backwards to forgive and reassure Will at every opportunity: my wife probably isn’t the only woman watching the scene where Will punches the wall next to Skylar’s head during an argument and felt that she probably needs to get the heck out. For all the film wants a grand romance, honestly the film would probably have been better if it had focused more on the friendship between Will and Chuckie (the true love of his life).

Good Will Hunting truthfully does little that’s original. Our hero struggles with his past, guilt, anger – but learns to become a better man through the magic, sympathetic ear of therapy. What makes it work is the confident writing, which never shies away from its hero’s unsympathetic qualities and the sensitive, low-key direction of van Sant (the film never uses crashing violin-like moments to overegg emotion). It’s also superbly acted across the board – Damon, Williams, Skarsgård, Affleck and Driver are all excellent. It’s a warm tribute to the power of friendship. In short it gives you a pleasant, engaging and easy-to-relate to story. And who doesn’t want that?

A political pioneer is lovingly paid tribute to in van Sant’s heartfelt biopic

Director: Gus van Sant

Cast: Sean Penn (Harvey Milk), Emile Hirsch (Cleve Jones), Josh Brolin (Dan White), Diego Luna (Jack Lira), James Franco (Scott Smith), Alison Pill (Anne Kronenberg), Victor Garber (Major George Mascone), Denis O’Hare (State Senator John Briggs), Joseph Cross (Dick Pabich), Stephen Spinella (Rick Stokes), Lucas Grabeel (Danny Nicoletta)

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States. Milk is a passionate, accessible and lovingly crafted biopic from Gus van Sant, which aims to restore this crucial figure back to the heart of public consciousness. van Sant covers a lot, but he crafts a film that hums with respect and a great deal of life. It also gains a huge amount from Sean Penn’s extraordinary and compassionate Oscar-winning performance, which embodies the spirit of this political pioneer.

Milk, in many ways, takes a traditional biopic approach, attempting to capture all the major events of Milk’s life in just over two hours. We follow Milk (Sean Penn) from closeted office worker, starting a relationship with Scott Smith (James Franco) to San Francisco and becoming part of a vibrant gay community – although one still facing an onslaught of discrimination and persecution from the authorities. Milk determines to change things, eventually elected as City Supervisor in 1977. From there he fights against the anti-gay Proposition 6 and pushes for change, until his murder by fellow City Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin) in November 1978.

Milk makes a strong statement about the dangers faced by the gay community in this period of American history. It opens with a montage of newsreel footage showing the impact of raids and the reaction to Milk’s murder. It explores in detail the vicious backlash against gay rights across America, with Florida among several states passing legislation to repeal rights. There is a creeping sense of danger throughout, from Milk walking down a dark street looking over his shoulder, to the everyday prejudice characters encounter on the streets. Above all perhaps, it strongly demonstrates the powerful sense of shame people were driven into about their sexuality, most powerfully in a young man who cold-calls Milk begging for help. Milk fascinatingly explores the tensions within the gay community and its representatives – split between radicals, like Milk and his friends, and the more traditional elite worried someone “too gay” will alienate people.

It’s a beautifully shot, loving recreation of 1970s San Francisco, fast-paced, insightful and informative. As Harvey Milk, Sean Penn gives an extraordinary, transformative performance. Penn’s careful study has beautifully reproduced Milk’s mannerisms and vocal tics, but above all he has captured a sense of the man’s soul. Penn presents Milk as fiery but caring, loving but sometimes selfish, passionate but reasoned, both an activist and a politician. He’s a man determined to make life better, so young men don’t feel the shame he felt growing up – not a hero or a superman, just someone who feels he can (and should) make a difference. Penn’s energetic performance mixes gentleness with a justified vein of anger at injustice.

And he has a lot to be angry about. The film’s finest sequence is Milk’s duel with Senator John Briggs (waspishly played by Denis O’Hare) over Proposition 6. van Sant skilfully re-constructs the debate, but also carefully elucidates the high stakes and the impact its passing would have had. van Sant’s film is frequently strong not only at reconstruction but also in using drama to inform and, above all, to bring to life the sense of hope people had that the struggle could lead to change.

The film grounds Milk firmly within his relationships and friendships, while exploring clearly the issues that motivated him so strongly. To do this, the film shies away from Milk’s polyamorous relationships, grounding him in a series of long-term relationships, some functional and some not. It presents Scott Smith (sensitively played by James Franco) as Milk’s lost “soul-mate” (the couple split over Milk’s all-consuming focus on campaigning) – perhaps van Sant’s attempt to keep the film as accessible as possible by introducing a more traditional element. Smith is contrasted with Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a sulky and immature man equally alienated by Milk’s focus.

Those personal relationships are extended to explore the tensions and fractured friendship between Milk and his eventual murderer Dan White. You’d expect the film to recraft White as a homophobic killer. Instead, it acknowledges White’s crime was largely motivated by factors other than gay rights, primarily his mental collapse and his sense of aggrievement over a workplace dispute. Sensitively played by Josh Brolin, White is presented as a man’s man suffering from a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurity (the film openly suggests he may have been closeted himself). Milk’s mistake is misunderstanding the depths of this man’s insecurities and never imagining the lengths they might drive him to. Brolin is very good as this troubled, if finally unsympathetic, man.

Milk of course fully anticipated being murdered – it was just he expected a homophobic slaying at a rally, rather than an office shooting by an aggrieved co-worker. One of the clumsier devices used in the film is its framing device of Milk recording his will a few days before his unexpected murder, a device that seems to exist solely to allow Penn to pop up and explain things more fully at points the film can’t find another way to expand. But again, it might be another deliberate attempt by van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black to make a film as accessible as possible, by falling back on traditional biopic devices (including its semi-cradle-to-grave structure), just as he aims to shoot the film in a vibrant but linear and visually clear style, avoiding overt flash and snappy camera and editing tricks.

Perhaps that’s because the film generally knows it doesn’t need to overplay its hand to capture emotion (when it does, it’s less effective: you could argue its slow-mo murder of Milk to the sound of Tosca is far less affecting than the look of shock and horror that crosses Penn’s face a moment earlier when he realises what is about to happen – a cut to black might have worked more effectively here). Actual footage of the candlelit vigil after his murder, mixed with reconstruction, is simple but carries real impact. Throughout the film, real-life stories pop-up time and again of prejudice and pain, which move with their honesty. Above all, it becomes a beautiful tribute to a passionate, brave and extraordinary man who left the world a better place than he found it.