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A Beautiful Mind
***
Cinema Releases - March 1, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 159
minutes. Directed by Ron Howard. Written by Akiva Golsman; from the book
by Sylvia Nasar. Starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly,
Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Josh
Lucas.
John Forbes Nash, Jr was a brilliant mathematician
who in 1949 wrote a paper about games theory that eventually became applied
in fields as varied as trade, psychology and biology, and won the Nobel Prize
for Economics in 1994. From the mid-1950s up until 1990, Nash developed
schizophrenia, found that it was ruining both his own life and the lives
of those around him, and ended up willing himself out of the disease simply
by ignoring the things he was told weren't real.
This could not have been an easy task, as hardly
anyone in recorded history has managed to achieve it, and I would have
appreciated some more detail about the process in "A Beautiful
Mind", which is based on the bestselling Sylvia Nasar book about
Nash's life and features Russell Crowe in the lead role. The last third of
Ron Howard's film, which deals with Nash's recovery, tells a lot of things
in montage and skims over the background of life -- I would have preferred
the film to run for three hours and give us a little more detail. The real
John Nash went through a divorce and a lot of sexual experimentation while
he was trying to rid himself of mental illness, suggesting the period was
rich in emotional particulars, and I would have liked to see
them.
The strength of "A Beautiful Mind" comes in its
first two thirds -- I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that
there is a bold structural move at one point in this movie that cleverly
reveals its portrayal of schizophrenia. We get a sense of the point of view
of a schizophrenic -- the movie creeps up on us insidiously, much like the
disease, and clicks into focus the 'reality is perception'
cliché.
Other clichés are put into context so
effectively that they don't feel like clichés, because we've seen
them evolve. Paranoid ramblings, conversations with thin air, mood swings,
depressive silences, agitated body language and obsessive scribblings --
this is all typical madman behaviour that we've seen in other movies, but
here we understand where it comes from.
Ron Howard directs the movie without the bizarre
stylistic devices that no doubt tempt all filmmakers who tackle movies about
the mind, letting the aforementioned bold structural move speak for itself.
The feel of the picture is one of straightforwardly absorbing drama, which
is of course crucial to our gut involvement, and gives the twist meaning.
Crowe is an involving lead; we know from other movies that his very presence
has an indefinable interest about it, and to the role of Nash he brings a
memorable West Virginian accent and specific way of communicating, as well
as an endearing nerdiness and general goodness. Jennifer Connelly, as Nash's
wife Alicia, gives heart to the movie -- with her striking expressions, curious
eyes and voice of strained confidence, she combines strength and vulnerability
in a manner that is crucial for us to both care about and believe her character's
story. I've thought for years that Connelly is a born star -- she's not only
a damn good actress, but has a beauty that pours out at us with the vigour
and purity of water from a mountain spring -- and now, with the Oscar nomination
and publicity that has come from this role, she is finally getting her
dues.
"A Beautiful Mind" has problems -- I really wish
that last third had been less sketchy, because before it the movie had seemed
to be building to greatness. Still, the film does a remarkable job of making
us see things the way it wants us to. "Do I look imagined?", someone asks
the confused Nash at one point, and well, that's the real question, isn't
it? In the skewed perception of schizophrenics, each thing seems as real
as every other, but some just might happen to not be true. Which leads me
to an unanswerable question -- how do schizophrenics know that the people
telling them that they're schizophrenics aren't hallucinations in themselves?
Do you think John Nash sometimes wonders if he hallucinated winning the Nobel
Prize?
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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