|
As a brilliant mathematician and a victim of schizophrenia, John Nash (Russell Crowe) has a mind
that is both a blessing and a curse. The genius's "beautiful mind" at once renders enormous service to humanity and betrays Nash with terrifying delusions. From
1947 through 1994, the movie strings together episodes in John Nash's life—as a brilliant, quiet, cocky and socially inept Princeton scholar, as a professor who marries his
student Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), as an unwilling spy hounded by federal agent Parcher (Ed Harris), as a mental ward psychotic descending into madness and finally, as a
graying survivor reemerging from the depths to win the Nobel Prize.
A Beautiful Mind is based
on Sylvia Nasar's 1998 biography of Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr., but it is not another biography on film. The film states before the credits roll, "....The
Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. still teaches at Princeton, and walks to campus every day..." but it leaves out facts that would have made Nash more human and
vulnerable, like his being a bisexual in his 20s, his having sired his first child by a mistress, Alicia's divorcing him and their subsequent remarriage, etc. The Nash
that comes out of this carefully recrafted biography is a romanticized figure arousing sympathy, an awe-inspiring victim-turned-victor; in short, a hero.
But never mind. One shouldn't expect moviemakers to gamble millions of dollars on an honest portrayal of one man's life, even if he were a genius who has been compared to Darwin, Mendel and Newton. Let's just look at
A Beautiful Mind,
the movie, and size up Crowe instead of judging Nash. Crowe does a superb job of playing this tormented paranoid of a genius: his odd gestures, facial twitches, erratic glances, loping walk and his convulsions under insulin shock therapy all combine to wow the viewer anew with Crowe's acting prowess—especially when you recall the picture of invincibility and immortality the actor projected as the (Oscar-winning) hero in
The Gladiator. Indeed, it is Crowe who carries the movie from beginning to end, ably spurred by fine co-actors. That A Beautiful Mind
won the Best Picture in the recent Golden Globe Awards—with Crowe as Best Actor and Connelly as Best Supporting Actress—is saying much about the technical excellence of the film.
Families with older teen children may pick up a thing or two about the power of love and faith in
A Beautiful Mind.
Mental illness in the movies is usually shown as sensational, pathetic, perverse, laughable or grotesque. In this movie, mental illness is just a disease that stands in the way of a happy marriage—a cross to bear—but it is the cross that paves the way for the crown, the gore that leads to glory. For those who love and believe that "something extraordinary is possible" even in the darkest hour when they could see a loved one falling apart beyond recognition, that extraordinary something indeed happens: patient love frees the beloved from the clutches of madness and living death until the hoped-for dawn returns.
(Date reviewed: March 8, 2002)
|
