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A Beautiful Mind
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Ron Howard's Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind is a compelling look at one man's genius, his debilitating mental illness, and the fine line between the two. The film beings with John Forbes Nash (Russell Crowe) at Princeton, where he struggles to think of an original idea, and the stroke of genius that will make him matter. Nash is eccentric, socially awkward, and extremely competitive. Eventually, he finds the inspiration for his innovative and influential work on game theory. He's chosen for a post at MIT, which includes crucial code-breaking work for the US government. There, he meets a beautiful and brilliant student, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly).
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Brilliant mathematicians and scientists often operate on a different mental plane from mere mortals, and A Beautiful Mind is a poignant reminder of this truism. Its subject, John Forbes Nash Jr., is a still-living math genius who discovered an important theory while in graduate school, developed schizophrenia and landed in a mental institution soon after, and won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994. Though director Ron Howard's populist style makes its first third feel simplistic and forced, the film deepens in the final two acts, and proves worthy of its unique and difficult material as the credits roll.
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A Beautiful Mind begins with Nash (Russell Crowe, Proof of Life, Gladiator) entering Princeton for graduate school in 1947. While other students furiously publish papers and attend class, Nash withdraws and seeks his own original idea. This idea will bring him the recognition he feels he deserves, as well as acceptance among his peers. In probably the most annoying element of the film, Nash finally develops his theories after observing his friends try to pick up women in a bar. The movie then follows Nash to MIT, where he meets and marries student Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly, Requiem for a Dream, Waking the Dead). There, he ... meets William Parcher (Ed Harris, Enemy at the Gates, Pollock), who enlists Nash to break codes for the Department of Defense.
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A Beautiful Mind successfully lures the viewer into the mind of a character who is portrayed as defining everything in his world in mathematical terms; it does so by offering visual representations that suggest his mental patterns. Furthermore, the film defines Nash as a character that demonstrates a potential for creating revolutionary theories that will ultimately reward his extreme dedication to this scientific field. Unfortunately, while Nasar's book explores with evident honesty his life's adversities, the film is most concerned with offering a romanticized version of the man's life. This choice lessens the impact of the numerous blows the man admirably survived, and consequently fictionalizes many aspects of the life of the real man and presents a falsified homage to Endurance. Nevertheless, A Beautiful Mind successfully envelopes the viewer in the character's [A]lmost imperceptible delusions as it subtly integrates the character's schizophrenic state to plot narration. Yet the film's most intriguing attempt may be enjoyed in a scene where Nash astonishingly manages to grasp a momentary lapse of reason within his profound madness and finds a logical means by which to overcome his mental disease and prove his extraordinary intelligence.
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Although A Beautiful Mind is based on a true story, it does bend some key facts of John Nash's life. The sexual scandals are not mentioned in the movie. The real John Nash's son was actually born out of wedlock and Nash was divorced by his wife Alicia. In this regard, the movie makes Nash's character a bit easier to enjoy. However, even in the movie, Nash's problems are evident. He is not made out to be a hero necessarily for who he is, but more for what he accomplished.
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As a genre piece, A Beautiful Mind is enlivened by its incorporation of elements of the thriller. The espionage sub-plot gives Howard an opportunity to bolster the film with set pieces including a car chase shoot out, and plenty of moments of suspense and drama which the 'disease of the month' format usually does not allow for. Later in the film these elements begin to pay off from a psychological standpoint and become part of the texture of the psychodrama which then ensues. Though scenes of Nash struggling with his sanity in a hospital overseen by a psychologist played by Christopher Plummer are more familiar in generic terms, the repeated flashes of paranoia and the continuing visual presence of indicators of perceptual originality are enough to ward off narrative tedium.
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A Beautiful Mind