Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Adam Goldberg, Josh Lucas, Christopher Plummer, Judd Hirsch, Paul Bettany
John Nash was a Nobel prize winning mathematician, a Princeton professor, and a paranoid schizophrenic haunted by delusions throughout his adult life. The fact that Nash was still so brilliant despite his mental illness is what makes A Beautiful Mind so compelling. There was plenty of criticism of Ron Howard's film (despite winning four Oscars including Best Picture) about how Howard's film somehow glossed over the seedier aspects of Nash's life. A Beautiful Mind is a study of how one man was processed the world and still found a way to contribute so much to it. For many, the descent into insanity would be the end. For Nash, it was an obstacle he felt he could work around. The Nobel Prize in 1994 showed that he did indeed work around it. The stories of Nash's alleged homosexual affairs and the fact that he and his wife actually divorced then remarried serve only to muddy the waters.
As I've stated many times, I don't go into biopics fully expecting 100% accuracy. I go to see how the filmmakers will depict their subject and find the emotional center. A Beautiful Mind is mainly interested in how Nash was able to improve his life after diagnosis and a stay in a mental institution where he received daily electric shock treatments. The delusions never did leave, but he still thrived. His suggestion that he could reason his way out of his dilemma was scoffed at by his doctor (Plummer), but yet, in this film anyway, he manages to do so. It's likely not a recommended course of action for the mentally ill.
When we meet Nash, he is a socially awkward graduate student at Princeton. He is brutally honest and abrasive with others. He is all elbows. He meets someone on the first day and denounces the lack of originality in the man's work. His roommate Charles (Bettany) thinks he should get out more instead of writing endless equations on his dorm window. He soon develops theories that earn him a doctorate and place him at a lab doing top secret government work for a shadowy G-man named Parcher (Harris), who appeals to Nash's vanity by saying, "You are, quite simply, the best codebreaker I've ever seen."
John soon meets the beautiful Alicia (Connelly), a student in one of his classes. They are attracted and she likes his quirky, awkward ways. They soon marry, but afterward the true nature of Nash and his work comes into focus. Let's just say some of the people we take for granted as real are not, much like Nash surely did. Did Nash suffer such intricate delusions? Maybe, maybe not. But does it matter when the story is this good?
Russell Crowe turns in his finest film work in A Beautiful Mind. We are fascinated to know what makes him tick, especially before we know the exact depth of his illness. I thoroughly believe Jim Parsons based his Big Bang Theory Dr. Sheldon Cooper on Crowe's performance, which is quite a compliment. After his diagnosis, he learns to love more, appreciate his family more, and stare down his demons. Crowe's work here is of considerable nerve and depth. Connelly (Oscar winner for this film) is no pushover. She perceptively knows how to handle John and loves him, which carries her through some tricky emotional scenes. She is John's partner in his journey (although in real life they were divorced for nearly 40 years before remarrying in 2001).
John Nash continued to contribute to the world of economics and mathematics until he and Alicia's death in May 2015. They died in a taxi accident on the New Jersey turnpike and when news of their deaths came, I thought of this movie. It creates a Nash that may or may not be close to the real one, but it is absorbing and lovingly tended to by Howard. He directs with a clear love and admiration for his subjects and it allows us to be a witness to the end and then the beginning again of a long road for the Nash family.
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