One of the most monumental scenes from the movie, Good Will Hunting, includes a monologue spoken by a main character, Sean Maguire. Sean is a therapist that is trying to get through to a mathematical prodigy with a presumptuous and arrogant attitude. Sean is able to alter Will’s perspective by using allusions, emotions, parallelism and tone, while at the same time, establish a sense of respect for himself.
An important part of the monologue spoken by Robin William’s character, Sean Maguire, is the purpose that the monologue itself serves. Maguire wants Will Hunting, a character played by a young Matt Damon, to understand that although he is a natural genius and basically a walking encyclopedia, he hasn’t experienced everything. Maguire uses …show more content…
Sean begins by saying that Will probably only knows love by reading sonnets but that he doesn’t realize the power that a significant other can have. “And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up with her in the hospital for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors can see in your eyes that the term ‘visiting hours’ don’t apply to you”. This is probably the most important and powerful part of the monologue. Sean explains how he suffered with his wife as she went through the fatal phases of cancer and how he stayed right by her side throughout it all. Sean shows how strong the feeling of love is and that it’s so much more than something you can find in a …show more content…
Robin Williams is a renowned actor for his ability to really “feel” what he is acting and that is something definitely seen in this scene. When Sean is speaking about his friend dying in war and his wife battling cancer, he frequently pauses before describing a memory or a moment. During these pauses, he looks out and cracks a faint smile. You can see it’s not something that’s easy to talk about for him but that he is doing it to make a point. As this is going on, the camera zooms out a bit so that you are able to see Will’s face. By the end of the soliloquy, Will has a humbled look on his face as if he almost feels guilty for thinking he was better than Sean. Another thing that Sean Maguire does to strengthen his monologue, is he uses his eyes to create an appeal to Kairos. When Sean is speaking about the Sistine Chapel and says, “You’ve never actually stood there, and looked up at the beautiful ceiling”, he looks up into the sky and his eyes widen to make it seem like he’s actually there inside the Chapel in the Vatican City. When Sean talks about his friend dying in his lap, his eyes are staring straight out into the distance. He looks as if he is reliving the moment and that he’s actually there when his friend passed in his hands. The last way that Sean’s eyes are used to effect the scene is during his speech about love and more specifically, his late wife.