DVD : Beautiful Mind, A [2002]

Rating: - A brilliant film
Russell Crowe gives arguably a career best performance as mathematician John Nash, who has schizophrenia. The visual hallucinations of his illness are depicted as real both for Nash and us, while the paranoid elements are given with just the right amount of off-key madness yet retaining (for Nash) a degree of reality. Crowe also portrays well the personality of Nash in his illness, for example his obsessive need to find patterns and break codes. I am looking forward to reading the book on which the film is based, and would recommend the film to everyone with even a passing interest in flawed genius.

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Rating: - A BEAUTIFUL FILM
A Beautiful Mind's greatest achievement, in my humble opinion, is the way it makes schizophrenia accessible to "sane" people. The general public knows schizophrenics tend to talk to themselves, repeat certain actions and do things generally at odds with the norm. But why? It's nearly impossible for a "sane" individual to understand why this happens...and more importantly, what that feels like. Without this essential empathy, many people become frustrated with the mentally ill, asking why patients can't pull themselves together and just bear up. We express this same impatience with the criminally insane who act upon delusions with disastrous results. It is incomprehensible.

A Beautiful Mind does all it can to change that, and it succeeds. Unless you are familiar with John Nash's story, you probably won't guess he's schizophrenic until part-way into the movie. He's eccentric, abrupt, and highly intelligent, but doesn't seem crazy. His delusions are as real as reality to Nash, and likewise, they are real to the audience, who cannot tell the difference between truth and delusion.

Incidentally, I came across a review from a "professional critic" who blasted A Beautiful Mind for including "all that spying stuff that had nothing to do with Nash's work that was thrown in for Hollywood thrill." I feel bad for that chap, since he missed the entire point of the film. But that just proves Ron Howard's genius in creating a picture of insanity indistinguishable from reality.

There are some truly shocking moments in A Beautiful Mind. When Alicia finds her husband's secret cache of newspaper clippings behind their house, I was eerily reminded of Jack Nicholson's wife in The Shining discovering his endless, typewritten pages of the same phrase. The scene that follows, culminating with Nash's realization that his delusions are indeed a false reality is brilliant. In a moment, remembering Marcee, Nash has a flash of insight, and he finally accepts his illness -- ironically, through his intellect. When Nash imagines that someone is going to harm Alicia, he lunges at her -- and only through his eyes do we see how a seemingly senseless act of violence is a gesture of love, filtered through the smog of delusion.

Now my take on the acting: Superb in every sense of the word. Russell Crowe is incredible. I can't stress that enough. There's never any question about the authenticity of his character. Crowe doesn't rely on his elaborate makeup to age Nash -- his walk, words, and voice do that elegantly in the movie's end. Crowe will get at least another Oscar nomination out of this one. And, he better win. Jennifer Connelly is amazing as well. And when Crowe and Connelly are put together, extraordinary chemistry erupts, they just gel together, they really belong with one another. Some people have had problems with the romance part of the movie, saying that the way John and Alicia even started seeing each other wasn't very realistic and why Alicia would stay with John after he becomes distant. But, I think that maybe it started out as just a crush, you know, and the math question she showed him was just her excuse for going to his office and she already knew she was going to ask him out before hand. Maybe she's just attracted to the kind of person Nash is? Who knows? A lot of people are attracted to the "weirdest" things sometimes. The crush took over the fact that he sort of insulted her work and she still asked him anyway. When you're around someone you like so much you can't help but be fooled by them. I can't really explain it, but I can understand why she still asked him to dinner. And I guess if you love someone as much as Alicia loved John, then you would stick with them through anything. Even how distant he became, she still stuck with him.

Moving on, I think Ed Harris is, as always, great. Harris continues to prove that, simply because he's flawless. With delusions like these, no wonder Nash was torn between treatment and "spying."

Simply put, A Beautiful Mind is a film which extends far beyond the 2 hours and 15 minutes that you will spend viewing it in the theater. The characters continued to haunt me after the movie (and still do), thanks to the Oscar-inducing performances by Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly and all of the supporting players. They are not merely acting, yet are transformed into the characters, leaving no trace of a line between their part and reality.

Of course a film is only as good as a screenplay would allow, and the story contained within is written in a way that compliments everything that is truly great about A Beautiful Mind. Ron Howard contributes truly inspiring work to this film, and I hope that the critics remember him when awards are being given out.

All I can tell you now is that if you're looking for an emotionally-charged movie that will make you cry, but still filters in some very funny moments as to lighten things up every now and then, with near perfect acting, cinematography, directing, editing and a screenplay which will cause the story of John Nash to inspire you, then consider A Beautiful Mind.

I hope a lot of people see this film. Not just because Russell Crowe is a hunk or because it's a Ron Howard piece, but because you will learn something important. You will learn why compassion is an absolute must when dealing with the mentally ill. You won't glare at the next person you see muttering to themselves. And when someone you love is dealing with a disorder, be it schizophrenia or depression, you won't ask them to "pull themselves together." You will understand why they need your love -- because they are just as confused as you are.

In closing, if Russell Crowe isn't awarded the Best Actor Oscar this year, then my faith in movies and its rewards system will be seriously tarnished.

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Rating: - Beautiful Film
You have to have appreciation for this film. Sure, it's not a day by day depiction of John Nash's real life, but it covers enough of the basics of his life that you have to realize what he went through. True, his wife did divorce him in ''real'' life, yet, if you read the biography by Sylvia Nasar, she does stay by his side to the very end...you have to agree that that takes a lot of courage and strength. To live a life so full of genius, and then to have the same thing that gives you that gift ''turn'' on you, blows my mind. John Nash achieved way more in his life WITH schizophrenia, than I ever will in my whole life. So, although the film doesn't follow the biography exactly, you have to realize that no film is exactly how the book is written...the main thing is that it shows you that there is diseases, etc in this world and this film is how one man LIVED his life with a horrible disease.
The scene where he displays how his economics thereom works is classic and I even used for my MBA exams...the following day

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Rating: - A beautiful performance
I don't get it; Russell Crowe gets a best actor Oscar for the corny (if visually impressive) "Gladiator", but misses out for this? There ain't no justice! Crowe is stunning in the role of schizophrenic mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Nash, and he's backed up by an outstanding cast. I enjoyed being fooled by this film, because we initially see things as Nash sees them - and then we begin to see that many of them aren't actually there, and we start to wonder what's real and what isn't. In a mild sense we experience the confusion that Nash himself experiences when his perceived world starts to disintegrate. Excellent!

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Rating: - Excellent Hollywood-ized version of the man and his madness
This resulted in four well-deserved Academy Awards in 2002: Best Picture for Brian Grazer and the people at Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard for his direction, Jennifer Connelly for her supporting role, and Akive Goldsman for his script adapted from Sylvia Nasar's biography. It is a beautiful and touching movie, uplifting and full of a lot of things that Hollywood does very well.

Russell Crowe is believable as the arrogant yet vulnerable mathematician John Nash who fell into paranoid schizophrenia while an undergraduate at Princeton University. A philandering and selfish man who is paradoxically almost as lovable as Albert Einstein, Nash can also be humble and exhibit a wry, self-effacing sense of humor. To me he is a great hero, not because of his work in Game Theory for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, but because he is one of the very few people ever to conquer, as it were, schizophrenia.

In the outstanding documentary from The American Experience PBS series, "A Brilliant Madness" (2002) Nash explains how he did it: he just stopped listening to the voices. The voices that the paranoid schizophrenic hears are inside his head and they are amazingly persuasive; the delusions are as compelling as monstrous personages come to life, vivid, demanding, in many ways more "real" than the reality we normally experience. So it really was heroic of John Nash to come to grips with his delusions and to mentally shove them aside. The vast majority of paranoid schizophrenics can never do that.

Yet the movie merely resembles his life and his singular experience. Goldsman's script and Howard's direction take the life of John Nash and distill the essence of his triumph while brushing aside many of the unpleasant and non-heroic details. I don't object to this because this movie is clearly aimed at the widest possible audience, and I appreciate the wisdom of that approach. But for those of you interested in a more comprehensive and objective picture of the man I can recommend both the documentary mentioned above and Nasar's biography. I especially found it valuable to view the one-hour documentary because to actually see the man and to hear him speak allowed me to better appreciate the fine performance by Russell Crowe.

I found Jennifer Connelly absolutely mesmerizing as Alicia (not to mention gorgeous). Ed Harris was a hardcore graphic nightmare as the unrelenting Parcher while Paul Bettany was intriguing and clever as Nash's nonexistent buddy. Howard's direction not only got excellent work from everybody, but he was able to bring the pathos and exhilaration of Nash's life to the audience in a very satisfying way emotionally. If you can watch this without shedding a tear or two you may want to check your synaptic connections. Incidentally the makeup work on Crowe and Connelly to allow us the illusion of the passing years was outstanding (and got an Oscar nomination).

The key to the movie and to Howard's vision is the way that the real world and the Nash's delusional world are meshed. It's clear he wanted to compel the audience to share the paranoid schizophrenic experience. While not a paranoid schizophrenic myself I have known people who are, and I have had similar, limited experiences myself under certain, shall we say, circumstances. The sheer terror that can sometimes be felt came through in the car chase scene (yes, Howard managed to get one in) while Nash's obsessive energy was revealed on the walls of the rooms that he had completely covered with pages from magazines that he had frantically searched looking for secret Soviet codes.

Some quibbles: while undergraduates loved beer then as they do now, they did not in 1946 go out for pizza, and if they had they would have called it "pizza pie." There were no pizza parlors and no pizza at the market. If you went to an Italian restaurant you had spaghetti or ravioli, and the pizza that was served was mostly bread with a thin topping of cheese and sauce, nothing like the great thin platters we have today.

New Zealander Russell Crowe's West Virginia accent faded in some scenes only to return strong in another.

Also, no mention in the movie is made of Nash's homosexual experiences nor of his running away to Europe or his desire to renounce his US citizenship. I understand that Howard decided to leave out the homosexual angle because associating homosexuality with schizophrenia would open a can of worms that would detract from the theme of the movie. Also left out was Nash's other paternity with a woman he never married.

Nash is not a saint, but he is a hero, and this beautiful movie is a fine tribute to him and his accomplishments.