Hunting for Cambridge

Oscar night looks like it will be Harvard night this year, with local film "Good Will Hunting" and the movie about the ship on which Harry Elkins Widener met his end gathering a combined 23 nominations. Both films are charmingly romantic (in other words, unrealistic) and can only add to Harvard's cinematic image in the wake of such earlier works as "Love Story" and "With Honors." "Titanic," of course is Harvard by omission.

There is no mention of Widener in the in the script and no rare-book collector in the dining room on board. Nevertheless, when at the beginning of the film the rusty safe is eagerly opened only to reveal a pile of soaked papers, I half-expected to see what was left of Widener's first edition of Bacon's Essays, the volume he is said to have returned to his cabin to fetch before the ship went under.

As compelling as "Titanic" was, "Good Will Hunting" gets my vote for Best Picture. It's well-written, well-acted, and just plain well done. Robin Williams, reprising his mentor role from "Dead Poet's Society," is brilliant, as usual, and gained a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his efforts. Matt Damon (Best Actor nominee) plays with wit and skill the tough kid from South Boston who's really a genius. But the real reason I loved "Good Will Hunting" is that even before I entered the theater, I felt like I had some stake in it.

Damon and Ben Affleck, who not only star in the film but wrote the script, grew up in Cambridge, and Damon attended Harvard before dropping out to pursue his Hollywood career. The plot involves a mathematical prodigy from Southie working as a janitor at MIT, that school two T stops from Harvard. I walked into the Kendall Square Theater prepared to criticize or applaud the movie's school and our cities. The audience was a tough crowd; the seat were filled with MIT professors and students and a smattering of Harvard folk, all anxious to see how their academic worlds would appear on celluloid.

There's no doubt that the film played toward every nerd stereotype and town-gown conflict it possibly could. The MIT math professor who discovers Hunting's genius is your basic arrogant academic who can't believe that the boy who sweeps his classroom can also solve equations. Hunting's girlfriend, a Harvard senior headed for med school, is rich, privileged, and housed in an ivy-covered dorm which could be any of Harvard's undergraduate houses (but isn't).

Hunting's Southie friends joke about going to a bar in the Square (the Bow, as it turns out) and "----ing up some smart kids." And of course, once at the bar, Will meets a pompous grad student straight from central casting.

These stereotypes are by definition over-simplifications. But the audience appreciated each one. Why? Because while the stereotypes don't match everyone at MIT and Harvard, we've all met at least one arrogant professor and probably more than one pompous grad student. and this movie speaks from experience, filmed as it was through the lens of local actors playing Southie guys who interact with the academic worlds of MIT and Harvard.

The film consciously sets up a few stereotypes and knocks them down, giving the movie a depth and self-awareness it might otherwise have lacked. That knocking down, however, still leaves standing the traditional cinematic scenario of a talented poor boy making good in a dominant rich world.

Witness the statement of Affleck's character when the guys from Southie visit the Bow: "So this is a Hahvahd bah. I thought there'd be equations and shit on the wall." There are no equations on the wall, of course (maybe if they'd gone to the Grille...), but there is the unpleasant encounter with the grad student eager to embarrass those he considers his intellectual inferiors.

The juxtaposition of the Southie guys' incorrect stereotyping of all of Harvard with the unfortunate appearance of someone who embodies that stereotype makes an important point, that stereotypes are both lazy versions that falsify reality and occasional insights into life. This films credits us with the intelligence to distinguish the one from the other.

"Good Will Hunting" is a Boston and a Cambridge move through and through, and the Kendall audience appreciated that almost as much as we appreciated the representations of our academic worlds.

Will Hunting and his girlfriend have a late night snack at the Tasty (perhaps the last time that precious relic was captured on film), and Robin William's psychiatrist works at Bunker Hill Community College. The MIT dome looms prominently, and the Lowell House bell tower makes a brief but pivotal appearance. Having seen the film, we look at these buildings with a new eye, our hangouts and homes having become celebrities of sorts.

Whatever happens on Oscar night (famous for its quirky results), it seems certain that Harvard will enjoy one or two Cambridge-linked statuettes. But as we look ahead to Oscar night 1999, as marvelously romantic as "Titanic" and "Good Will Hunting" are, an even greater movie would be a realistic one, a picture set in the days that may come when our luxurious economy strikes the economic iceberg, when first-class and steerage mix, and Harvard student Oliver Barrett iv washes dishes at Kiley's on 'D' and Old Colony in Southie.

Susannah B. Tobin '00 is a classics concentrator living in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.