GOOD WILL HUNTING (64)

Directed by: Gus van Sant

Starring: Will Damon, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver, Ben Affleck

The Pitch: A young janitor at MIT is in fact a mathematical genius, but reluctant to use his extraordinary gift.

Theo Sez: Danny Elfman's opening music is typical of this odd, schizophrenic movie - a predictably mellow piano theme overlaid with atonal electronic jangling. It's like the contradiction - or perhaps tension - between its structural neatness (featuring the kind of ending that echoes and completes bits of business set up earlier in the movie) and its clutter of sub-plots and just-hanging-out scenes ; or between its endless stream of well-turned dialogue (even when they're making love, these characters can't stop talking) and its intimate, physically-charged shooting style (even when they're making love we're right in the midst of it, looking at the freckles on Will's naked skin) ; or between Affleck swigging beer like the blue-collar character he plays and holding the can with a delicately crooked pinky, like the nice middle-class boy he is ; or between its crude, black-and-white dramatic arc (traumatised young man Opens Up to sensitive shrink ; Comes To Terms with himself ; cue great joy) and the fuzziness everyone brings to it - literally so in the images, which often have everything but the subject out-of-focus. It's actually a lot more slippery and unusual than people give it credit for, proof - even without van Sant's contribution - of an indie aesthetic gradually filtering into mainstream American movies (or vice versa, if the Miramax logo still means anything). The only real problem is our hero, the eponymous Will, who's too abstract a figure to ever come into focus, an adolescent's idea of Genius - not just autistic, able to juggle numbers and memorise swathes of text without connecting emotionally, but actually able to evaluate and critique what he reads, and ultra-sensitive too, and apparently omniscient, and good-looking besides. He's too perfect for anything much to be at stake here - not because it's unheard-of for highly intelligent people to be permanently-scarred underachievers (see Robert Crumb's older brother in CRUMB), but because such people generally lack confidence and make lousy romantic leads (ditto). Fortunately, once you get beyond the smartest-guy-in-the-world bullshit, the film can still work as a coming-of-age story, a mixed-up kid finding his way to adulthood : it's well-acted and sincerely-felt - and, despite everything, unexpectedly touching. Otherwise, when it tries to peddle us a hero who's both superman and "real person", it's faintly ludicrous - this is one area where you can't have it both ways. And isn't there something a bit distasteful about the way child abuse has become all-purpose Hollywood shorthand for "explaining" dysfunction?