A Beautiful Mind

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A Beautiful Mind

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A Beautiful Mind

Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp

From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experiences it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink o...( read more  read more... )f international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery once he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over this tragedy, and finally, late in life, received the Nobel Prize.

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A Beautiful Mind Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    September 17, 2009
    SirPant
    A beautiful mind but a boring film.
  • Chiefilms
    September 3, 2009
    Chiefilms
    Crazy movie with a great script, so technical wif all da maf and science. Sorry about that, but watching this movie makes you want to get some glasses because you feel smarter. Not really though. Good stuff.
  • EarthlyAlien
    February 14, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I've made the most important discovery of my career - the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any l...( read more)ogic or reason can be found. I am only here tonight because of you. You are the only reason I am... you are all my reasons."

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    There is an inherent danger in romanticizing the link between genius and insanity. It is a hard impulse to deny, as both geniuses and the insane are defined primarily in how they differ from "ordinary" people. Both are somehow removed from the everyday in extraordinary/terrible ways, so the urge to see them as two sides of the same coin is difficult to stifle completely. It lurks constantly in the background of our thoughts on the truly exceptional, and it pops up repeatedly in popular depictions of the troubled lives of the imminent.

    Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, which tells the story of Nobel Prize-winning mathematical genius and paranoid schizophrenic John Forbes Nash, Jr., constantly plays with this line, but the film succeeds largely because it avoids conflating Forbes' brilliance and his mental illness, instead focusing on how the latter was an encumbrance on the former. It has been suggested, quite rightly, that the same unique mental predisposition that allowed Forbes to imagine the solution to complex mathematical quandaries in ways no other human being had been able to do also contributed to his sinking into paranoid hysteria and delusions. Yet, to say that they are one in the same, or to try to romanticize the schizophrenia as somehow being an enabling factor for his imminence, is a discredit to Forbes and a risky delusion in itself.

    Nash first gained a name for himself at Princeton in the late 1940s, where he wrote a master's thesis that essentially revised 150 years of economic theory and eventually became the bedrock for future works in disciplines as disparate as gaming theory and physics. A Beautiful Mind begins here, with Russell Crowe playing Forbes as many have described him: arrogant, aloof, socially inept, and always in search of the true original idea. Disdainful of classroom learning, Nash was an individual in every sense of the word, a misanthrope who was fully aware of the fact that others didn't like him very much. Crowe plays up Nash's uncharismatic tendencies in a way that assures us that Nash is not to be sentimentalized, but not to the point that he becomes unbearable.

    The screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the critically lauded biography by Sylvia Nasar, is clever in how it deals with the onset of Nash's schizophrenia, and those who are familiar with Nash's life story will immediately recognize the primary mechanism by which it works. Those who don't know Nash's life will likely enjoy the film the most, as it is designed to put you in his shoes and see his life from his point of view. In some instances, this involves rather laborious special effects that are designed to visualize his thought processes, whether that be matching the patterns of light created by sunlight refracting through the cut-glass surface of a tumbler to the design on a bad tie, or recognizing hidden codes in newspaper articles. Sometimes this works (as when Nash looks at a wall of numbers and discerns the repeating pattern), sometimes it is just silly (as in the scene where he describes the mathematically rationalized process by which three men can score with three women at a bar).

    Like Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind is structured in three acts: genius, madness, and awakening. Nash's early days at Princeton produced his greatest works, and by the time he was in his early 20s, he had a coveted position at MIT. There, he meets a beautiful graduate student named Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), who somehow understands his eccentric, isolated ways of life and falls in love with and marries him. Then, Nash becomes involved in code-breaking for the government under the auspices of a shadowy CIA operative named William Parcher (Ed Harris), which leads him into a world of increasing fear and paranoia, to the point that he can no longer discern what is real and what is not. It is at this point that his schizophrenia reveals itself in its full-blown state, and much of what Nash thought was real turns out to be the production of his own mind.

    The film is at its most compelling when Nash is battling hardest against the forces within himself. There is a deep-seated irony that this isolated man finds his greatest rival inside his own mind, the very place that spawned his mathematical brilliance - it is the great tragedy that the rational and the irrational emerged from the same place, thus making the latter so much more believable for him. Again, the danger here is in seeing them as one and the same, but A Beautiful Mind constantly avoids this pitfall by placing them against each other, showing how the intellectual production of Nash the genius could only continue once he willed himself to control the impulses of Nash the schizophrenic.

    As Nash is constantly haunted by his delusions, the film never pretends (as some will accuse it of doing) of painting Nash as a miracle case who, by dent of the love of Alicia and others, "overcomes" his mental illness. It is true that, starting in the early 1990s, Nash's schizophrenia did go into remission, a rare occurrence for a mental illness that is generally degenerative in nature. The film uses this miracle of sorts in an expected feel-good kind of way, but by this point it has earned the right to do so. A Beautiful Mind is conventional (and NOT the best film of 2001, at all) in its narrative arc of transcending great obstacles, but Crowe's carefully nuanced portrayal of Nash, Connelly's fully transformation into her own as an actor and Howard's avoidance of cheap sentimentalism balances any overly audience-arousing histrionics the film throws our way toward the end, most notably when Nash is awarded the Nobel prize for mathematics in 1994.

    Depicting mental states is a difficult thing to do in film, particularly in popular films, and if A Beautiful Mind simplifies Nash's condition, it is in the pursuit of the genuine cinematic, something for which it cannot be blamed. If you want to know the in-depth details of Nash's life and his bout with schizophrenia, read Nasar's excellent book. If you want an engaging, rousing, well-made film about a brilliant man whose life was almost completely devastated by mental illness, see A Beautiful Mind.
  • mrpopcorn
    February 9, 2009
    mrpopcorn
    "The Only Thing Greater Than the Power of the Mind is the Courage of the Heart"

    After a brilliant but asocial mathematician accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn to the nightmarish.

    REVIEW
    This ideologically conventional yet wonde...( read more)rful biopic manages to be both haunting and deeply heart-warming at the same time. Veteran filmmaker Ron Howard conducts the plot with such a compelling sensitivity that will have most people drying up the tears on their faces while watching it. There are surprising plot twists, beautiful imagery and many touching moments. A solid, competent film that deserved every Academy Award it received.

    "A Beautiful Mind" was named Best Picture of the year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 2002. Mr. Howard's achievement as Best Director was also recognized, along with another golden statuette handed to screenwriter Akiva Goldsman - in which is probably his best work to date - and last but not least, the magnificent Jennifer Connelly walked on the stage to pick up the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Highly recommended for those who enjoy moving, dramatic motion pictures.
  • lewiskendell
    December 4, 2008
    lewiskendell
    I usually avoid biopics like this, but A Beautiful Mind was well worth watching. John Nash had quite a life, and even if some of this movie isn't entirely accurate, it's certainly one that will make an impression on most people. Both Russell Crowe and the beautiful Jennifer Conne...( read more)lly do excellent jobs.
  • SirGenius
    November 11, 2009
    SirGenius
    Almost went through one whole movie Mr. Crowe but no cigar.
  • goodgreif401
    November 9, 2009
    goodgreif401
    Keeps u locked in and then surprises u.
  • Yelverton
    November 8, 2009
    Yelverton
    Great film. Russell Crowe at his best.
  • ixtli77
    November 6, 2009
    ixtli77
    There is a little line between the genius and the madness...
  • SarahTheMovieLover
    November 6, 2009
    SarahTheMovieLover
    Very good. I knew ahead of time what his condition was therefore I was able to predict many things that happened or were revealed. That doesnt mean there werent surprises though. The ending wasnt what I thought it was going to be. The acting was all around well done and the story...( read more) is fabulous. Its a great movie and one that should be seen by all.

    What did this movie teach me? Any obstacle can be dealt with and you can succeed no matter what.
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