Kinematoscope

Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was an unexpected delight- assured, authentic, and relatively taut. The plot, from Dennis "Boston is the new Purgatory" Lehane, got a little murky in the end; Ben's brother Casey and Amy Ryan had to work overtime to cover for weak performances elsewhere, but such flaws were easy to overlook after going in with one eyebrow raised skeptically.

Expectations for his sophomore effort, The Town then, were considerably higher- tempering them once again is his decision to take the lead in front of the camera as well. Despite quiet, solid work in Hollywoodland, State Of Play, and Extract his last leading role was in Jersey Girl, at the height of Bennifer-related inanity.

But he's more than up to the task- The Town trades some of Gone Baby Gone's atmospheric intensity for straightforward heist action, and Affleck himself plays a solid leading man, but is an even better casting agent- every supporting role is superbly cast and superbly inhabited.



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The film starts with perhaps fancifully enhanced claims about Boston's Charlestown neighborhood producing more bank robbers per captia than anywhere else. That may not be true (at least since the Irish mob was gentrified out in the 90s), but The Town does an excellent job at drawing from the real-life close knit feel of the place to create a fictional, moody haven for thugs and hard-living wiseguys.

It's a different flavor than the Boston of Scorsese's The Departed (almost clinically austere in comparison) or the hidden malice lurking in Gone Baby Gone (which turns out to be a smokescreen). The cops in The Town's Charlestown turn their heads when the odds aren't in their favor, everyone (except Affleck's character) drinks and does oxy or coke. The cloudy sky rushes over the Bunker Hill Monument in time-lapse in two different shots- life goes on in twilight.

Piercing the clouds, and literally mentioning sunny days in key dialogue, is Rebecca Hall's love interest. She gives it her best, but the role isn't really there. Affleck's foursome of masked bank robbers takes her briefly hostage to begin the film, and the ensuing romance, unknowingly with one of her captors, never feels real enough to be worth the reveal we all know is coming. Hall's gift might be for wry understatement (like in Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Please Give), but I felt like she might have sold the melodrama of this part if it had more depth to it.

The time spent on the love interest, then, seems like the main culprit that deprives us of more time spent with Affleck's livewire best friend, an ex-convict brought to life beyond the cliche by Jeremy Renner.

Or perhaps we could have gotten more time with Jon Hamm's squinting, bluntly smug FBI-agent as he rapidly closes in. The "Mad Men" breakout star absolutely nails the one face-off he and Affleck have, and gains steam as the film goes on and we see he's just as unconcerned with the people that get in his way as any bank robber.

But if those characters seem underutilized, Chris Cooper's single scene as Affleck's incarcerated father and Blake Lively's handful of key moments as Affleck's former flame are perfectly paced and timed. Cooper's scene is almost a brief intermission, halfway through the film, that underplays a key plot element and leaves a realistic amount unspoken- Lively is perhaps the most memorable of the entire casy, if only because her raw performance is the least expected.

There's something unyieldingly linear about The Town that I admire the more I think about it. It ends with a minor flourish, but the majority of the screenplay establishes clear stakes, sets us dramatic revelations for the last third of the film (all of which are thankfully not overdone in the slightest), and then leaves the heavy lifting for the more-than-capable cast.


As perhaps unexpectedly autuer-like Affleck has been as a director so far, it helps that he started out as an internationally famous movie star- The Town boasts the same cinematographer (Robert Elswit) and editor (Dylan Tichenor) of P. T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Oscar nominees (with Elswit winning) for their work. (This after double winner John Toll lensed Gone Baby Gone). The result is a film seamless in aesthetic and pace, making the possibility of a Best Picture nomination seem less and less like a longshot.

In a slow September, it's easy to recommend an artful, gripping thriller like The Town.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Today we take a look at yet another Best Picture nominee, 1997's Good Will Hunting- another deserving film beaten by Titanic (which is decidedly not going to appear on this countdown. L. A. Confidential, which also lost that year, is at #65 as of this writing).

So many questions. Will we set a record for f-bombs in a countdown entry? Will we find clues to Ben Affleck's later poor script selection in this early triumph? Do we like dem apples? And is it Will's fault? Is it?

The Key Players:

Director Gus Van Sant recently earned a second nomination for Best Director for Milk, and won a Palm D'Or for 2003's Elephant. A giant of indie films, if that makes any sense, he's also the auteur behind such celebrated films as Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, and Paranoid Park.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck famously launched themselves to fame writing and starring in this film. Affleck was the slightly bigger star at the time (starring in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy), but Damon is the slightly bigger star these days. He's headlined three Bourne action movies and landed roles in The Departed, Saving Private Ryan, and the Ocean's series, and is also f*cking Sarah Silverman.

Ben Affleck's successes have been just as big, if less critically lauded (Armaggeddon, Pearl Harbor, The Sum Of All Fears), but his failures have been noticeably more spectacular, between Gigli and Daredevil). He's recently made a comeback of sorts with respectable roles in films like Hollywoodland and State Of Play and directing the well-received Gone Baby Gone, and he's also f*cking Jimmy Kimmel.

People under the age of thirty might not generally be aware of this, but Robin Williams used to be more than an utterly insane individual and bit player in awful family comedies. He was a respectable dramatic actor, winning an Oscar for his work here after nominations for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, and The Fisher King. Granted he has always balanced art-fare with family-friendly crowd-pleasers, but even those used to actually please crowds: Jumanji, Hook, and Mrs. Doubtfire have held up all-right, and his voice-work in Aladdin is my favorite part.

He has always been utterly insane, though.

Stellan Skarsgard (The Hunt For Red October, Ronin) Oscar nominee Minnie Driver (Circle Of Friends, Grosse Point Blank), and Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Gone Baby Gone) round out our cast, but I should probably get to the movie already, huh?



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The Story:

Damon and Affleck's award-winning script is verbally dense, but the plot is rather simple: Damon plays the eponymous Will Hunting, an orphaned, wary 20-year-old from South Boston with a rap sheet, abandonment issues, and the mind of a genius.

Working as a janitor at MIT, he solves an advanced math problem left on a hallway blackboard, bringing him to the attention of renowned math professor Gerry Lambeau (Skarsgard)- the professor goes to his latest hearing for assault charges and convinces the judge to release Will, provided he meet weekly with a therapist.

That therapist, after a few hilarious failed-attempts with stuffier shrinks, turns out to be Lambeau's college roommate Sean Maguire (Williams), who develops a rocky rapport with Will.

Will also meets a British Harvard med student, Skylar (Driver), and struggles with letting her into his life, which previously consisted only of a few loyal friends (two of whom are played by Afflecks).

Can a young man find his way in the world, even if all he has are a genius intellect, loyal friends, an impassioned mentor, a concerned therapist, and the love of a beautiful woman? Stay tuned to find out.

The Artistry:

Good Will Hunting is a film that I remembered only for a few key scenes, since I had seen it so long ago: mostly the funny moments, like "How do you like dem apples?", or the "Afternoon Delight" scene.

But it's not hard to see how it ended up with nine Oscar nominations, even in a year dominated by the more technically expansive Titanic and L. A. Confidential. Danny Elfman's austere score plays nicely off of the many songs contributed by the late Elliott Smith (whose career also took off thanks to this movie).

While our good old Van Sant expressiveness occasionally takes hold of the lens, such as in the early fight scene, Good Will Hunting is still by far his most accessible film this side of Finding Forrester. Jean-Yves Escoffier's cinematography takes the odd turn into fractured-lens flashbacks, but stays clear and bright the rest of the time, and Pietro Scalia's editing is uniformly linear and well-paced.

It's the screenplay, on the other hand, that takes the most artistic indulgences- the film has the habit of pausing every fifteen minutes for a "For Your Consideration" type speech or fight scene. But the cast manages to make each of these scenes seem like something that could occur naturally, from the scenes reminiscent of Ordinary People between Will and his therapist to the the relationship melodrama.

Good Will Hunting was apparently originally written as a thriller, with government agencies trying to tempt Will into using his intellect to serve them- this seems to have been preserved in a long speech Will makes decrying international intelligence practices when the NSA offers him a job.

A constant undercurrent of the script is the class struggle that's such an indelible part of Boston's geography- the clash between the industry surrounding the universities and the slums on the edges so well-realized in subsequent films like The Departed and Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. Affleck's character has a monologue near the end of the film basically berating Will for nearly being stupid enough to ignore his ticket out of the lower-middle-class.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

After rejecting Lambeau's attempts to involve himself in the academic world and awkwardly breaking up with Skylar after she asks him to move to California with her, Will finds himself at a crossroads. After some soul-searching set to some music, we see him decide to take the NSA job.

Maguire, by now a friend through their sessions, finally breaks through in a climactic and Oscar-y scene in which they discuss Will's childhood, which was full of foster parents' abuse. Maguire tells Will "It's not your fault" more than a few times (ten, in fact), until he finally breaks into tears and gets the message.

Will drives to California, and leaves only a note parroting an earlier anecdote of Maguire's- he had to see about a girl, it says.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Good Will Hunting I think, is something of a modern classic. It's not a film a whole bunch of people openly rave about (in part because it's so remarkably earnest), but it's something nearly everyone saw and liked.

After re-watching it, I'd say higher.

The Legacy:

Well, there's the awards and stuff, and the careers therein launched, but I'd say a clearer mark of cultural influence is parody: presenting Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season


The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Lots of choices on Youtube, for once, but in a pinch I'm gonna go with the scene where Robin Williams describes how he met his wife.



The abrupt shift to "No, I didn't rush the f*cking field, I wasn't there." gets me every time. And the way the clips of the game are worked in, and the overhead shots of the chairs in the office matching the bases- that's what's Van Sant brings to the table.

Leftover Thoughts:

-I love that this film has all the Academy pleasing speeches but also lines like "Can we get off of mothers? 'Cause I got offa yours last night!" in it.

-Actual Tagline for this film: Wildly charismatic. Impossibly brilliant. Totally rebellious. For the first 20 years of his life, Will Hunting has called the shots. Now he's about to meet his match.