A Beautiful Mind (2001)

It's fitting that I first encountered this movie whose basis is on mathematics as part of my high school geometry class (which, I will admit, I sucked at). It was one of those days where the teacher had nothing planned to teach so she decided for us to watch this film. I'd heard of the film, although I had no idea what it was about, and I vaguely knew who Russell Crowe was at that time because of Gladiator and I think I was aware that the film won several Oscars but if it hadn't been for the class, I honestly don't think I would have ever sought it out. Watching it was interesting experience. I had no clue that the movie was about schizophrenia nor did I completely understand what having that disease means. I believe I did know that it was based on a true story but that's as far as I knew. Anyway, what I'm getting to is that I did like this movie when I first watched it and I still enjoy it to this day. I know there are many who don't like it and that's fine but to me, this is quite a worthwhile film.

The film is a fictionalized account of the life of brilliant mathematician John Nash. It begins with him as a young prodigy at Princeton, brilliant but very eccentric and a bit antisocial. After refusing to follow the school's rules and attend classes, which almost results in him failing, Nash comes up with a groundbreaking new concept of governing dynamics that leads to him being placed as a code-breaking mathematician at MIT. Eventually, he meets a mysterious agent of the U.S. Department of Defense who informs him of a conspiracy by the Soviet Union to attack the United States with nuclear weapons and asks him to help find where the Russians are hiding the bomb by breaking secret codes. While this is going on, he and a former student of his fall in love and become married. Eventually, however, their dream becomes a nightmare, when it's revealed that Nash has schizophrenia and the conspiracy is all in his mind. The rest of the film dramatizes Nash's battle with the mental illness and how he eventually overcomes it.

First let me comment on the film's director, Ron Howard. I'm sure he needs no introduction as he's one of those directors who is wildly adored by both mainstream audiences and critics. The ironic thing is that until I heard about this film, I had no idea who Ron Howard was. I didn't know that little Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show had not only become a filmmaker but a very successful one as well. Until I happened across an interview with him made at the time of the release of A Beautiful Mind, I didn't know anything about his movie career. Now, having said that, Howard, of course, is also one of those directors that, along with Steven Spielberg, is often criticized for being overly sentimental and that his movies are sometimes so sugary sweet and whimsical that they can make you puke. To be honest, while I admit that that fact is true about both directors, I can watch and enjoy a good majority of Spielberg's films (remember, Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies ever); I can't say the same about Howard though. There are only a few other films of his other than A Beautiful Mind which I do like, so you definitely won't see a section of The Directors devoted to him on this blog. Still, I will say that I do feel that this is one of his stronger films, one that walks that sentimental line just right.

When people criticize this film, the biggest complaint that's usually harped on it is that it takes too many liberties in telling the story of John Nash. Again, I had no idea who John Nash was and hadn't read the book by Sylvia Nasar when I first saw the movie so it didn't affect me. From what I can gather, this film's story is quite different from the actual events that it's based on but I don't understand why that should cause people to automatically hate it or why people made that a big deal about this movie being that way, since movies based on true stories are almost always different. I always say that if you want to see the true story, then watch a documentary about it. Filmmakers just naturally have to change things sometimes in order to make what they're telling easier to put on celluloid. The same goes for movies based on books. Some things that looked good in print might not do so well onscreen and that's why every movie based on a book can't be word for word like the book (and that's pointed at you, Stephen King!) You like the book, then read the book. I've honestly never cared about a movie being 100% true to its source material, just as long as it's done well. In my opinion, A Beautiful Mind is a movie that's just fine without having to be true to the source.

In the movie, John Nash is played by Russell Crowe, who seemed like an unlikely choice, especially since he had just done movies like L.A. Confidential and Gladiator. Say what you will about Crowe's reputation for being a bad boy and having a really bad temper (which may or may not have caused him to lose the Oscar for this film) but I think this movie proves that the man is a good actor despite his faults. He plays Nash with great subtlety and goes through a remarkable arc in the film as the character, both physically and mentally. From the beginning of the film, it's made clear that Nash is brilliant but eccentric, even arrogant in his regards to other people. He admits that he doesn't like people much and feels that college courses only dull the mind and render it unable to promote real creativity. He becomes determined to come up with a completely original concept in order to distinguish himself. He does become discouraged when the administrator tells him that his refusal to go to class, publish reports, or follow the rules doesn't warrant any placement for him but eventually, he becomes inspired by chance and makes an amazing breakthrough. After becoming a scientist at Wheeler Labs in Washington, he comes to find his routine there boring and beneath his talents. He becomes especially irritated when he's demoted to having to teach classes there (although that is where he meets his future wife).

Nash becomes quite pleased when the mysterious William Parcher of the Department of Defense gives him a more challenging assignment in code-breaking. However, he becomes increasingly obsessed with his work and the threat he's working to prevent as well as the shady underworld he believes he's plunged into begin to take their toll on him. He also becomes very concerned about his new wife, Alicia, who's also pregnant with his child. Eventually his paranoia and refusal to tell Alicia what's going on prompts her to call the local psychiatric hospital, whose staff have to take him by force. That's when it's revealed that he has schizophrenia and that Parcher, along with the conspiracy, his former roommate Charles and his little niece Marcie are all hallucinations. He initially refuses to believe that he's mentally ill but when he tries to remove a radioactive implant that was supposedly put in his arm, he can't find it and that's when he begins to understand. After going through insulin shock therapy, he's released but his life doesn't improve even with the birth of his son due to the side effects of the medication he has to take. In one touching scene, an old friend of his tells him that there are more important things than work but Nash is so tortured by the disease and by the medication that he asks, "What are they?" He eventually becomes so fed up with the side effects that he secretly stops taking the medication, causing him to plunge back into the disease and begin hallucinating again. He becomes so disassociated from reality that he almost accidentally kills his infant son and injures Alicia. However, he eventually accepts that Parcher and the others are imaginary because little Marcie never gets old when he sees her, even though it's been years since they first met.

Despite having finally accepted that these important people in his life aren't real, Nash continues to see them but refuses to begin taking the medication again, determined to find a new way to overcome his illness. He resorts to simply ignoring them and concentrating on his loving wife as well as working out of the library at Princeton and auditing classes. He eventually says goodbye to Charles and Marcie forever, acknowledging that while he appreciates them, he can't allow himself to interact with them anymore. Nash not only overcomes his schizophrenia but becomes a well-respected teacher at Princeton, eventually winning the Nobel Prize for his work. An important scene is when he's informed of his being considered for the prize and everyone in the cafeteria gives him the passing of the pens, a ritual for a professor who achieves the accomplishment of a lifetime. This is important because he witnessed such an event when he was a student at Princeton and he saw that it meant recognition. Nash is clearly very touched by this event now happening to him and modestly says, "That was most unexpected." The movie ends with the Nobel Ceremony in Sweden, where Nash credits his reasons, his recovery from mental illness, and his triumph in his field to the love and devotion of his wife, Alicia. It really is touching to see how far Nash has come, from an arrogant, antisocial prodigy to a horrifically ill victim to a humble teacher who has now acquired the highest honor imaginable and not because of his logic and reason but due to the heart of his wife.

Jennifer Connelly plays Alica Nash, a role that won her an Oscar. Like John Nash, she herself goes through an arc throughout the film. She starts out as a student of Nash's at Wheeler Labs and becomes bold enough to attempt to solve a complex problem that he presented to her and the other students. While he tells her that her solution to the problem is incorrect, she's smitten with him enough to ask him to dinner. At the aforementioned dinner, you can see the two of them becoming more and more infatuated with each other, to the point where Nash shows her how pick out shapes in the stars. The next time they meet, Nash admits that he is infatuated with her and that's when their relationship goes to the next level (Ron Howard has said that this picnic scene was supposed to lead to a sex scene but he decided not to film it). Eventually, the two are married but that's when things begin to go downhill. Alicia becomes frightened by Nash's growing paranoia and bizarre behavior, which comes to a head when Nash frantically tells her to get to hide out at her sister's home in the middle of the night. It's her who calls the psychiatric hospital and that leads to Nash being diagnosed with schizophrenia. She tries to make her husband understand that everything he thinks is real is in his mind and she watches in horror as Nash is put through a particularly horrific insulin shock therapy. This is clearly not what she expected to become part of when she married Nash.

Eventually she gives birth to her and Nash's son but she has to deal with her husband's battle with the disease and the ordeal the medication's side effects put him through. She admits to Sol, one of Nash's colleagues at the Princeton and Wheeler that she feels guilt about a secret desire to leave Nash and even anger towards him and God. However, she also says that when she looks at Nash, she remembers the person she married and that she loves him. Despite this, the overwhelming nature of the disease and the medication's side effects culminates in her angrily smashing the bathroom mirror after Nash can't respond to a sexual advance from her. Eventually, she discovers that Nash has stopped taking his medication and has lapsed into schizophrenia again, which results in her infant son almost being accidentally drowned by Nash and her even being injured by him when sees Parcher threatening to kill her. Despite this and a warning from Nash's psychiatrist that he could become dangerous as long as he's not on medication, Alicia decides to stay with him and support his decision to find a way to battle the disease without medicine. She remains his rock throughout the trials of his battle with the disease and supports him. She's eventually overjoyed to see Nash interacting with students in the Princeton library and at the Nobel Prize ceremony, she's really touched when Nash credits her with being the reason he's there and why he has triumphed. It really is touching to see that her devotion and love has led to this moment and has brought him back from the brink of self-destruction.

Of Nash's delusions, the most benevolent and supportive is Charles Herman, the supposed roommate he had at Princeton who became his closest friend. Played with zeal and likability by Paul Bettany, Charles starts out as a very important force in Nash's life, encouraging to stop staring into space and get out every once in a while, as well as picking him back up at one point when he's down and depressed about his inability to come up with his original idea. Later when Nash becomes a scientist at Wheeler Labs, Charles visits him again and when Nash tells him about Alicia, he encourages him. When Nash asks if he should marry Alicia, Charles simply tells him that nothing is for sure. And later when things begin to go bad for Nash and he becomes frightened about the world that he's plunged into, Charles offers to help him in any way he can. When Nash is forcefully taken to the psychiatric hospital, he thinks he's been kidnapped by Russians and when he sees Charles there, he thinks he's been betrayed. It's ironic because Charles has betrayed him in a way, just not how he thinks. It's interesting to note that when Nash relapses in schizophrenia in the last third of the film, he becomes menacing, a stark contrast to how he was before. He tells Nash to listen to Parcher when he's telling him to get rid of Alicia and the baby and before that, Nash thought Charles was watching the baby. Of course, the baby almost drowned in the bathtub because there was no one there to help him but the fact that in Nash's mind, Charles wasn't doing anything to help the baby and that Nash says that the baby was safe regardless is kind of chilling because it shows not only that Nash has lost his grip on reality more drastically than he ever had before but that his delusions have become much more sinister. After that, Charles tries to worm himself back into Nash's life, even after Nash tells him that he won't talk to him ever again. He even goes as far as trying to shame Nash into letting him back in, calling him pathetic. After that, Charles, along with Parcher and Marcie, continue to be around Nash, watching and waiting for him to acknowledge them again. Perhaps as a delusion, Charles was more than willing to be Nash's encouraging friend but when he was rejected, first by the medication and then by Nash outright ignoring him, he became resolved to get back into his "friend's" life in any way possible, even if that meant causing Nash mental torture. Good friend but as a delusion, not one who will be ignored, as with the other delusions.

The least impacting delusion but one that is quite important is Charles' niece Marcie, played by Vivien Cardone. Although at first dismissive of her, Nash grows to absolutely adore Marcie, happily catching her in his arms when she runs to him. However, she ends up being the one who unintentionally proves to Nash that she, Charles, and Parcher are hallucinations because Nash realizes that she's still a young girl even though it's been years since he first met her. She also may or may not be a sign that Nash has a great battle ahead of him. When Nash is telling Alicia and Dr. Rosen, his psychiatrist, that he intends to fight his schizophrenia off without medication, he hears a childlike sound and when he asks if what he heard was their baby, Alicia informs him that the baby is at her mother's house. Since Nash doesn't develop any other delusions, we can assume that what he heard was Marcie and the fact that he sees her nearby right afterward is a deeper clue. She definitely acts as proof of Nash's uncertain future when Alicia asks him if he would ever hurt her. Nash, seeing Marcie run behind Alicia, responds, "I don't know." That's an eerie moment because Marcie appearing so briefly like that makes her seem almost like a ghost. The scene where he says goodbye to Marcie and Charles is touching due to Marcie shedding a tear when Nash kisses her on the forehead and curls her hair. Like her uncle, though, Marcie refuses to accept that her "Uncle John" has abandoned her, encouraging him to embrace her at one point but being visibly angered when she's rejected. Like her uncle, she loves Nash in a way but will do anything to make him acknowledge her again.

The most sinister delusion and the one that begins to turn Nash's life into a nightmare is William Parcher, played by the awesome Ed Harris. Parcher first comes off as a dedicated government agent when he asks Nash to help him break secret Soviet codes in various periodicals. He calls Joseph McCarthy an idiot for his overzealous Communist hunting but says that he's not completely wrong, since he believes there are Soviets in the U.S. Since Nash is bored with his routine assignments at MIT, he's overjoyed to work on something challenging. Parcher also tells Nash that his inability to develop bonds with people can prove to be very useful in this assignment and Parcher is not too happy with Nash marrying Alicia, watching their wedding ceremony from across the street. This, among other similar incidents, is the start of Nash becoming iffy with Parcher. There was something mysterious about Parcher the first time you saw him watching Nash break the code in the Pentagon control room but he starts to become sinister not only when he's watching Nash and Alicia's wedding but before that when Nash sees him watching from the shadows when he's delivering classified envelopes filled with his research. After a very traumatic experience involving a car shoot-out, Nash really wants to quit his assignment and that's when Parcher reveals just how menacing he can be. He basically threatens to tell the Soviets that Nash works for him if he doesn't continue his work. Before that when Nash brings up Alicia's pregnancy, Parcher coldly states that he warned Nash how dangerous attachment could be and that it was his choice to marry her. After that, Parcher disappears until Nash relapses and he's the first one he sees. Nash is at first hesitant to believe him when Parcher tries to make him continue his work but Parcher calls Dr. Rosen a quack and that if Nash continues his work, the whole country will know he's a hero and he will be reinstated. After that, Nash breaks from reality again and Parcher is the one that causes him to accidentally hurt Alicia when he threatens her. He orders Nash to kill Alicia because she knows too much and points his gun at him. Needless to say, Parcher is the primary source of Nash's torment as he tries to cope with the disease, causing him to act like a maniac in public when he accuses him of being a traitor to the government. When Nash screams, "You're not real!" at him, Parcher answers, "You're still talking to me, soldier!" Right there, Parcher clarifies Nash's problem: his hallucinations will continue to torment him as long as he keeps acknowledging them. In a way, what he said may have given Nash what he needed to deal with his delusions. From then on, like Charles and Marcie, he ignores Parcher, even though he continues to shadow him all the time.

Supporting cast-wise, you've got Josh Lucas as Martin Hansen, Nash's college rival who acts all high and mighty towards Nash from the start, stating that he may get the transfer to Wheeler Labs instead of him. He even causes Nash some distress when he challenges him to a game that Nash loses, especially after Nash was convinced he would win. Their rivalry is friendly and never has any malice though and when Nash does indeed get the transfer to Wheeler, Hansen is good enough not to hold a grudge and congratulates him. Years later when Nash returns to Princeton to work out of the library, Hansen is now head of the Mathematics Department there and allows Nash to work there. When Nash tells Hansen that he won after all, Hansen says that nobody wins and the two men now consider each other equals. Hansen helps calm Nash down when he has a break from reality at Princeton and he's the one who calls it to Alicia's attention that Nash is now interacting with other students in the library. He's the one who ultimately gets Nash the job as a teacher at Princeton and he's there at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden, watching his friend receive the highest honor.

Adam Goldberg and Anthony Rapp respectively play Sol and Bender, Nash's two college friends who join him at Wheeler. Not much to say about these two characters other than they come across as two good friends who kid Nash but are generally concerned about him when he begins to act strange. After Nash is treated for his schizophrenia and released, Sol visits him at home and tries to cheer him up but it doesn't work. Bender would have visited him but he was apparently too squeamish to do so. What I don't like is that after this scene, Sol and Bender are never heard from again and you never find out what happened to them. It doesn't make them look very sympathetic that they never contacted Nash again and makes it look like they just said, "To hell with him." Finally, there's Christopher Plummer as Dr. Rosen, Nash's psychiatrist who diagnoses the schizophrenia. He's sympathetic towards Nash's condition but he's also practical and doesn't give Nash much hope when he says he intends to conquer his disease without medication. He is good enough to allow Alicia to stay with Nash despite the danger implicated and we never hear from him again afterward, since Alicia never had to call him obviously.

If there's one thing A Beautiful Mind is good at dramatizing, it's how nightmarish a disease schizophrenia can be. When watching the film for the first time and knowing virtually nothing about its subject matter, I must admit that, like John Nash himself, I was quite shocked to discover that Charles Herman, Marcie, and William Parcher were nothing more than creations of Nash's diseased mind. Before the reveal, however, there were subtle hints given like how Nash always hears someone who is a delusion before he actually sees them. Also, when Nash first meets Marcie, if you watch you'll notice that as she runs among a group of pigeons, the pigeons don't react to her at all because she's not real. I never noticed that until I watched the special features on the DVD and Howard and company talked about it. Maybe I'm just gullible but I'd like to think it was more because of good filmmaking.

When the movie turns to Nash's diagnosis and he's placed in a psychiatric hospital, I feel that's where the dramatization of schizophrenia's impact becomes palpable. It's summed up very well in the scene where Nash is led into the room for his insulin shock therapy and as he's being fastened to the bed, Dr. Rosen tells Alicia, "The nightmare of schizophrenia is not knowing what's real. Imagine if you realized that the people and places most important to you were not gone, not dead but worse: had never been. What kind of hell would that be?" The feeling is punctuated even more when Nash is given the shot and falls unconscious, Alicia being the last thing he sees. A tear runs out of his right eye due no doubt to the realization of the nightmare his life has become. Again, if you'd seen this with no preconceptions about what the film is about, you'd be just as shocked as Nash is since the whole film has been told almost entirely from his perspective. Even after he temporarily stops having delusions, we see how tortured his life now is because of the effects of the medication and how that affects Alicia. There is some levity that stems from a scene where Alicia hears Nash talking to someone outside their house. Obviously, she fears he's seeing things again and when she asks who he was talking to, he says it was the garbageman. When Alicia informs him that garbage-men don't come at night, Nash says, "I guess around here they do." Then Alicia sure enough sees the garbageman outside the window and they both can't help but snicker at what she was thinking. Nash struggles to overcome his illness but as he eventually becomes stronger and more resilient enough to ignore his delusions, his triumph is satisfying on many levels.

I will say that there is one aspect of how Nash's schizophrenia is dramatized that I do find a bit questionable. It's the scene where, after delivering another envelope of supposed codes in periodicals, Nash is suddenly picked up by Parcher and a car chase/shootout ensues. After Nash is committed, Alicia finds that the building that he has been dropping his work off of has been abandoned but we can assume obviously that his schizophrenic mind imagined the electronic gate and there being people inside the building. But when Nash was having his delusion about the car chase, what was he really doing? Was he really sitting in a car and if so, then whose? Surely Parcher's car can't be real. Nash also doesn't seem to have his own car so that's out. Parcher also shoots one of the men in the other car and causes it to crash into the river. After that, Nash gets out of the car and looks at it. After that, the scene cuts to something else and we never see what else what happened. So what really happened? There was even a deleted scene where Nash and Parcher push his car into the river as well to cover up what happened but since this isn't in the final cut of the movie, we can ignore that. The question does remain: what was Nash really doing during all this? It does seem like this scene, as well shot and dramatized as it is, is a plothole. You also have to wonder what Nash was really doing when he first meets Parcher and is shown around a secret warehouse full of equipment. This is, however, much easier to explain as that Nash was simply wandering around the empty warehouse and talking to himself but you have to wonder why no one nearby heard him. Before we go on, I have to add that some may think I'm being too lenient on this film when I trashed High Tension for having very similar plotholes. The thing is, this is just one aspect of A Beautiful Mind and doesn't render the entire film useless, unlike High Tension, whose entire premise is made not only ridiculous but downright insulting to the viewer when revealed.

Another I'd like to praise A Beautiful Mind for is its clever subtle use of computer effects. There are quite a few CGI effects here but they're so well done and interlaced within the film that you probably don't notice them. Granted, the flashes of light that signify Nash's brilliance whenever he's looking for codes and patterns are obvious but what about those pigeons I mentioned that don't fly off when Marcie runs among them? CGI. Or the scene where Nash almost accidentally drowns his infant son? The water was CGI because they obviously couldn't put an infant in real water up to its nose and mouth. Most of the audience at the Nobel Prize ceremony at the end was computer generated as well. I honestly feel that with CGI being as in your face and overused as it is in movies nowadays, filmmakers should take a listen from this film and realize that this is how you use it well.

If Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg are the filmmakers always accused of being too sentimental and sugary sweet in their movies, James Horner is no doubt viewed that way among music composers. Yes, it's true that a lot of Horner's music is downright sappy and meant to tug at your heartstrings and he sometimes copies his own scores but I do like a good majority of his scores (his score for Titanic being one of them, so sue me) and the one he composed for this movie is no exception. A lot of it is vocalizing by singer Charlotte Singer mixed in with the music but I think it works well in punctuating the wonder of Nash's genius as well as the emotional distress his schizophrenia causes both him and his loved ones. And while the main theme, All That Love Can Be, is no doubt the exact type of thing that most critics loathe about Horner's music, I can't deny that listening to both the real song as well as the instrumental version that plays throughout the film does touch me in the context of the movie. Call me old-fashioned or soft or whatever you want but I do like this score.

For me, A Beautiful Mind is a beautiful film. Many will probably look at this review and be surprised that I would like something so Hollywood but a good movie is a good movie and that's the bottom line to me. Did it to deserve to win Best Picture that year at the Oscars and did Ron Howard deserve to win Best Director as well? That's debatable. I've always seen the Oscars as just a popularity contest that is fun to watch and nothing more but that's beside the point. The point is that while Ron Howard isn't one of my favorite directors, A Beautiful Mind is one of his high points for me and that's the way it is. Take that for what you will.