Family Relationships In Good Will Hunting, Miracles From Heaven And Abduction

Family relationships have the potential to strengthen a person’s life. I have developed a significant connection between four films and explored the importance of family using the idea of family strengthening a person’s life. The four films I have used to develop conclusions on this theme are Secrets and Lies, Good Will Hunting, Miracles from Heaven and Abduction. Each film is very different from each other but I can find connections within the four to show the impact that family has on individuals and their relationships. The importance of family is such an important theme for viewers as watching another individual being strengthened by their family can help you to realise the importance that your family has on your life. Directors and writers
In the films Miracles from Heaven and Secrets and Lies, we see individuals thriving and being strengthened by the love and trust within their family. The similar themes of both films help to contribute to prove my hypothesis that family relationships have the potential to strengthen a person’s life. These two films connect by the way they show how families depend on love and trust for each other. Both films share a similar theme of learning the importance of family. In Miracles from Heaven, we are shown the story of 10 year old Anna Beam. She lives with a very rare and incurable disorder which leaves her with the inability to digest food. We see Anna’s struggles to even try and complete daily life activities, such as getting dressed. Throughout living with her disorder, Anna’s family, especially her mother Christy, goes above and beyond to try and help cure their daughter, which is evident from quotes such as ‘I’m not leaving this hospital until I know what’s wrong with my little girl’ and ‘We’re not giving up’. As well as being a very God devoted family, their love and trust in one another is something which proves to be a very significant aspect of Anna’s strength to carry on even in the most difficult times when she feels as though she can’t live like this anymore. The aspect of family is portrayed to be the most important thing in Anna’s life, and when we get to see her viewpoint of family we know that she would not have
In Secrets and Lies, we find out that Cynthia, who is again, a low class white lady is the mother of Hortense, a higher class black lady. Through quotes in this film such as ‘I can’t be your mother, look at me’ in regards to her skin colour, we can see that the class and racial systems did have an impact on the relationship between Cynthia and the acceptance of Hortense as her daughter. The words spoken to each other did prove to make the acceptance that they were family harder due to neither one of them wanting to get past the norm of black/white and low/high class being separated. In Good Will Hunting, we see the story of Will Hunting. Will has a genius level IQ, however he chooses to work as a low class janitor at MIT. His class restrains him from wanting to show off his talents, so he keeps it hidden until he is discovered by the school Professor when he solves a high level math problem. Once Will is arrested for attacking a police officer, the professor agrees to help him if he agrees to regularly visit a therapist while studying advanced maths. Will takes a while to get used to the idea of opening up about his troubled past and family history but he slowly changes his attitude towards his situation and becomes a lot more accepting and involved. The importance of family in this film, Good Will Hunting is portrayed through Will Hunting and his