Tuesday, November 6, 2012

"all my little peccadillos"

this weekend i watched good will hunting, without all the swears that i found out were in the movie when i was looking up quotes for this post. the editing made it a little choppy, though i am told that the cinematography is kinda choppy anyway.

but anyway. i liked the movie, especially some of its thoughts on love. i mean, when am i ever not thinking about love? so it makes sense that those parts of the movie stood out to me.


here's the gist: will (matt damon), a foster kid from the slums of boston, is a janitor at MIT who is secretly a genius. he catches the attention of a prominent mathematician who decides to mentor will in order to keep him out of prison. part of the deal is that will also has to meet with a counselor to work through some of his issues.

sean (robin williams), his therapist, comes from a similar background and is able to build trust with will. like i said, the best parts for me were those where sean and will talk about relationships. here's a discussion that i really like.

Sean: You'll have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to. Maybe you're perfect right now. Maybe you don't wanna ruin that. I think that's a super philosophy, Will, that way you can go through your entire life without ever having to really know anybody...My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful idiosyncrasies. You know what? She used to fart in her sleep. [they laugh] Sorry I shared that with you. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and gone like "oh was that you?" I'd say yeah...I didn't have the heart to tell her...[cracks up] Oh [sheesh]... 
Will: [laughing hysterically] She woke herself up? 
Sean: [in hysterics himself] Yes!.... Oh [goodness]....aahhh, but, Will, she's been dead two years and that's the [stuff] I remember. [Will stops laughing] Wonderful stuff, you know, little things like that. Ah, but, those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. That's what made her my wife. Oh, and she had the goods on me, too; she knew all my little peccadillos. People call these things imperfections, but they're not — aw that's the good stuff. And then we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds. You're not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense. This girl you met, she isn't perfect either. But the question is: whether or not you're perfect for each other. That's the whole deal. That's what intimacy is all about. Now you can know everything in the world, sport, but the only way you're findin' out that one is by givin' it a shot. You certainly won't learn from an old [crazy] like me. Even if I did know, I wouldn't tell a [kid] like you.

first, apparently that first part was totally improvised by robin williams, so the hysterical laughter is legit, not just really good acting. but also, this is exactly what i believe about relationships. i've been thinking about this a lot lately. i want to be in a passionate relationship someday, the kind you see in romantic movies. but, i also know that that kind of passion doesn't necessarily define a marital relationship, especially after the first few years. then, the passion hopefully becomes something deeper, and that's something that i don't fully understand now. i think that initial spark is important, but what's maybe more important is the life you build together in the years to come. i think that's what sean is talking about here, partly. getting to know each other, quirks and imperfections and idiosyncrasies and all, and still being so in love, is what i want to get to.

and i love those bolded lines sosososososo much. none of us are perfect! but that's not the point; it's about being perfect for each other. man, i really love that. i know this is only a movie, but i really believe that's how it's supposed to work, how it can work.

so those are my thoughts on good will hunting, one of the movies to cross off on my list of must-sees. next up: finding forrester and a few good men.

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