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I know this is a pretty popular movie, but I don't know if anyone would score this quite as highly as I have. For me though, it's very personally relevant to me in that I am often paralyzed or simply weighed down by fear and anxiety due to seeing problems everywhere. "What if this? What if that?" This movie serves to address such extremely well. Sometimes, man... You just gotta shoot your shot. You gotta send it, because the alternative is sitting out on the sidelines forever. When you sit on those sidelines too long, you start to justify it to yourself. "Well, it's more comfortable here anyway. I could get injured. Maybe another time..." But we all know those are excuses. Bullshit you feed yourself because you are afraid. Obviously you should be judicious with the risks you take, but there comes a point where you know that you're just letting yourself down for nothing. Life is meant to be lived, not read from a book or seen through an observation window.
The movie is also, to a slightly lesser extent, about finding out and doing what you want to do. And I mean, what you REALLY want to do, without societal or familial pressures. It's easy to look at Will's genius and start to see him like he's some kind of machine that needs to be installed at a university, company, or government agency to pump out the maths and benefit humanity, but this is, in reality, a selfish and cold view. Will's a person. It's his damn choice, and whatever he decides he truly wants to do, he's right. He doesn't owe anyone his genius. And besides, all the math in the world will not solve current humanity's mindless fucking race to destruction.
One thing that is somewhat eyebrow-raising, though not a big deal whatsoever, is that I find it rather unrealistic that Will is able to scare off five veteran (I think it was five) therapists so easily. If you knew the kind of shit that therapists have to deal with on a regular basis, you'd know this is a laughable scenario. Any therapist worth their salt would merely be mildly entertained by Will's non-serious dialogue, even if it was personally targeted. "Bruh, I got a child rape victim, a former prisoner of war, and a heroin addict to see next. Bring it on." But still, it serves the story well, so I'm not gonna hold it against the movie.
Adding all this up, you should definitely see this movie if you haven't yet, though I will also admit, it's probably more relevant to me than to other people.
And also, a miscellaneous note. Will's recommendation of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is GARBAGE. Seriously. Matt Damon should have known better and such blatant propaganda does not deserve to be forever associated with what is otherwise an incredibly smart and well-written movie. I would, instead, highly recommend Samuel Eliot Morison's excellent, if somewhat dated, "The Oxford History of the American People". A copy of it is available for download right now in our Books to Rebuild Civilization With upload.
