What can a genius Bostonian rogue and a sweet clueless man living in a bubble have in common existentially? As it turns out, a surprising amount. In Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, Truman and Will must wrestle with realities constructed by others in order to find their true and natural path in life. Will’s flawed reality is emotional, while Truman’s is broader and more literal, for he lives in a constructed world, but both men must battle through these constraints of existence to find their freedom.
In the opening scenes of Good Will Hunting, the viewer is introduced to a young man pulled in two distinctly different directions by his instinct. Existentially speaking, Will Hunting is far from a coward, because all of his behaviors are strictly natural ones. He is concerned very little with what other people think, so if he wants to jump out of a car to beat up a grade school enemy, he does it. If he wants to anonymously solve a complicated theorem on a chalkboard in the hallway that he sweeps, he does it. Though Will's life seems to have established a pattern that accommodates for his varied interests (here, "varied interests" mainly include drinking, fighting, and library books), the setting and certain filming techniques serve to reveal that he is disenchanted with his life. The lighting is warm throughout much of the movie, especially in emotionally charged moments, as if to allude to the emotions boiling under Will’s cool exterior. The setting of Good Will Hunting is south side Boston, so it is filmed in decidedly depressed areas that suggest a sort of transience and disenchantment. Occasionally throughout the film, in between scenes, there will be a brief shot of Will sitting in a train or subway car, staring off into space, watching the world outside blur as it goes by. Though he has never left Boston, and claims not to want to, one cannot help but wonder if his aimless railcar riding is due to his desire to escape part of his life, or maybe his past. This suggestion plays into the existential principle of anguish, because Will is clearly experiencing the angst of a directionless youth, and the anxiety connected with the absurdity of the human condition.
When Professor Lambeau, an award-winning professor at MIT, discovers Will’s genius, he takes him under his wing to help him avoid jail time. The judges only condition is that Will see a therapist, and ultimately Will is introduced to Sean Maguire, a no-nonsense psychologist, also from South Side Boston, who is struggling after the death of his wife. As the film progresses, Will opens up to Sean as he is confronted with Lambeau’s expectations, job interviews, and a complicated romance with a girl named Skylar, whom he truly loves. Sean sees that Will is struggling to handle his new responsibility, and urges Lambeau to ease up on him, because he feels Will is reaching a breakthrough. Will ultimately breaks up with Skylar, pushing her away when she asks him to move to Stanford with her. He does this because he is afraid of what will happen if he falls further in love with her, only to be disappointed. Sean, who has access to Will’s past through his case file, understands that his issues within relationships likely come from abuse he suffered as a child, and seeks to help Will understand this.
Ultimately, Sean’s insistence that the abuse and the interpersonal issues “are not (Will’s) fault” is interesting, because it contradicts the Sartean principle of complete freedom and complete responsibility, which states that we are entirely responsible for what we become, because we have to freedom to choose. However, Sean seems to feel that Will is not responsible for his emotion limitations, likely due to the scope of the abuse he suffered. One would think that someone as intelligent as Will would be able to understand and control his own tendencies, but because he acts largely on impulse, his natural behavior has been allowed to take over. Because of the abuse he suffered as a child, Will’s natural impulse is a defensive and directionless one that causes him to do emotional harm to himself and the people he loves (namely Skylar). By acting naturally, yet also allowing tendencies from childhood experiences to shape him, Will both fulfills and contradicts two important existential principles. However, with the help of Sean, Will comes to understand the root of his interpersonal issues, and chooses to drive out to the West coast with his new self awareness to see of he can reunite with Skylar. In his final note to Sean regarding his departure, he echoes Sean’s own famous line and simply says to tell Professor Lambeau that “He had to go see about a girl.” Ultimately, in my opinion, Will does take control and responsibility of his own essence and choices, but he needed the help of Sean to understand himself first.
Despite the many obvious differences between the two films, the plot of The Truman Show mirrors that of Good Will Hunting because Truman, like Will, begins to feel disenchanted with the life he is living. Both men have never left the cities that they were born in, but Truman’s life is, unlike Will’s, constructed solely to keep him complacent and present in his manufactured universe. While the director of The Truman Show, known as Christof, states that “Nothing in the Truman show is fake, its all real,” Truman’s friends, wife, and even his parents are hired actors, and he is in truth the adopted son of a Hollywood corporation. The director is mostly referencing Truman’s responses to the events and milestones that are calculated to occur for him in his bubble-life. Though his reactions are real, his life lacks authenticity, and this void is contributed to by several filming techniques. First of all, the town he lives in mirrors a catalogue advertisement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The set and costumes of the actors in the movie are said to be inspired by Norman Rockwell paintings, and while this effect is charming, it feels empty and counterfeit to the viewer. I feel that it is purposely supposed to seem this way, almost to exaggerate to the viewer how manufactured his world is. This feeling of emptiness and falsification grows when Truman becomes rapidly suspicious of the authenticity of his life after a series of brief but significantly disruptive events. First a stage light from the fake sky above falls in front of his house, and then one day on the way to work he accidently taps into a Truman Show coordination broadcast of his own movements. These observations stir a suspicion inside him, and his daily routine begins to unravel, leading his to discover more and more things that seem inauthentic.
Interestingly, Truman has long desired to escape from his small-town life, as evidenced by his obsession with the Fiji Islands. A girl that he loved once, named Sylvia, was said to be moving there before the directors of the show whisked her off of the set when she attempted to blow the show’s cover. When Truman becomes frustrated with his “wife,” Meryl, he attempts to travel to Fiji, but the director of the show manages to orchestrate several mishaps and distractions that prevent him from leaving the town. Christof seems to think that they can derail Truman from his quest to escape by distracting him and adding to his dollhouse of a world, for he insists that “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.” He hopes that Truman will be deterred by the horror of the possibility that his suspicions are true, and will return to his uniform house and his painfully normal and standard routine. However, Truman is only encouraged by the setbacks, and he becomes smarter about how he seeks the truth. Unaware of this progress, Christof states, in a haunting moment later in the movie that “If his was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discovered the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him.” It appears that Christof agrees with the existential principle of complete freedom, but he doubts that Truman has the strength and ability to overcome the measures he has put in place. The arrogance of this quote is shot down shortly after when the director’s assistants discover that Truman has disappeared from his basement and is on the loose.
Truman’s escape is a joyously existential moment, because it is an example of a time when pure will and determined choice can overcome a life of conditioning. Though Truman has been conditioned to fear water after his own father “drowns in a sailing accident,” he overcomes this manipulation and steals a sailboat. In an effort to protect Truman from the truth and save the show, Christof conjures up a storm to try to make him turn back. Truman refuses and presses on, and Christof cuts off the weather effects to avoid sinking the boat and killing an international hero. The ultimate moment of existential decision arrives when Truman reaches the wall of the gargantuan dome in which he lives and finds his way to a door that leads off of the set. Christof speaks to him, explaining the terms of his life thus far and his personal significance to the world. Truman is unfazed and rides his existential momentum, ultimately stating with slight scorn, “In case I don’t se ya, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight,” as he walks out the door and off the set.
Perhaps the most striking similarity between these two films is that in the final scenes, each man is taking advantage of his newly realized complete freedom. Both Will and Truman leave behind the only lives and the only cities they have ever know to exercise their personal control over their destinies. Will leaves Boston behind, risking his pride and his heart in an effort to reconnect with Skylar, while Truman steps out of his bubble, risking pain and disappointment of the real world in an effort to define himself, make his own choices, and potentially reunite with Sylvia, his lost love. It is a subtle but striking similarity that both men are ultimately looking for love, which speaks to me, but you will have to ask Jean Paul Sartre (or perhaps our fabulously insightful class) if they have any insights on that one because my fingers are really tired of typing. I have to go see about some sleep, so good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!
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