| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | A Beautiful Mind (2001) |
| Director | Ron Howard |
| Writer | Akiva Goldsman, Sylvia Nasar |
| Lead Actor | Brad Garrett |
| Cast | Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly |
| Genre | Biography, Drama, Mystery |
| Release Date | January 4, 2002 (United States) |
| Duration | 2h 15m(135 min) |
| Budget | $58 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDB Rating | 8.2/10 |
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REVIEW
Viewers of A Beautiful Mind leave the theater with many possibilities for discussion. From one perspective, this is a story of a man’s courageous and determined struggle against his mental illness. From another, it is a story about the healing power of love.
Based on the life of Princeton mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., A Beautiful Mind tells the story of a mathematical genius totally lacking in social skills, who achieves early success but later must retrieve his life from total collapse. He goes on to win the Nobel Prize which turns out to be a relatively minor achievement compared to what he accomplishes in his personal life.
Without the knowledge that John Forbes Nash, Jr., actually exists, the audience would doubtless find this story too outrageous to believe. Some critics fault the film for not being totally faithful to the details of the real Nash’s life, but director Ron Howard uses his creative license to tell a story carefully focused on human dignity.
Howard takes us inside the skin of this mathematical genius misfit and schizophrenic, masterfully portrayed by Russell Crowe, to experience his hopes, compulsions, delusions, social ridicule and courage.
We first begin to sense Nash’s psychiatric problem when he journeys to the Pentagon to help solve a cryptogram. As he stands in the situation room with numbers illuminated on the walls, the camera literally makes his head swim, moving swiftly 360 degrees around him and making the walls vibrate. But not until much later do we understand the depth and seriousness of his problem.
For a long time, the audience sees the world through Nash’s eyes, believing what he believes as his world grows darker and darker, increasingly paranoid. We don’t know anymore than Nash does what is real or whom to trust. We don’t know if his government spy handler is genuine, or whether the psychiatrist sent to treat him is actually a Communist spy.
But Howard also shows us Nash through the eyes of the woman who loves him. Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) sees past his eccentricities, loving him for what he is. Nash’s touching pursuit of certainty in love before he proposes marriage finally yields to the mystery of the heart.
When Nash stops taking his medicine and relapses into his delusional world, Alicia discovers that he has become potentially dangerous. But she risks her own safety to help him fight his disease without committing him irreversibly to the hospital. When things are at their worst she pleads with him, “I have to believe that extraordinary things are possible.”
In the end
Nash’s success depends on his own efforts and those of others. Alicia sticks with him; a Princeton professor welcomes him back to the academic community, and Nash himself takes control by barring his delusions from his life, poignantly saying goodbye to them.
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