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I just watched two-hours of A Beautiful Mind about John Nash's life, yet I could have received much more insight into his character by spending two minutes looking up information on the Internet. Empty, empty, empty—another Opie-fest founded on the same platitudes that director Ron Howard grew up with on The Andy Griffith Show. Of course, in real life Nash's story is a feel good one when examining only the career highlights—he did receive the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in game theory in 1994 after suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for most of his adult life.
At the age of 21, the brilliant mathematician wrote his 27-page doctorate dissertation on the mathematics of competition to refute Princeton's legendary John von Neuman's treatment of win-lose game scenarios. Nash's constructs showed how no person could profit from competition and demonstrated mathematically how to create scenarios where both sides win.
That drew the attention of theoretical economists, mathematicians, and Parker Brothers. The young genius sparkled at MIT for eight years and his Hex game was marketed. Marrying in 1957, Nash was identified by the July 1958 issue of Fortune magazine as America's star of the "new mathematics," and he was soon to become a father. Life was looking great.
But then disaster struck. Nash began hearing voices, and he became incoherent, looking for secret messages in numbers—a classic case of schizophrenia. In real life the marriage ended (not so in Opie's film—too much of a downer!), but his wife continued to provide shelter back at Princeton, where Nash wandered the campus halls and libraries for 25 years, a ghost of his former self before regaining some control of his delusions in the mid 1980s. Yet the question remains, how closely is genius associated with insanity? Nash addresses this in the brief autobiography that accompanies his Nobel Prize:
So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.
For example, a non-Zoroastrian could think of Zarathustra as simply a madman who led millions of naive followers to adopt a cult of ritual fire worship. But without his "madness" Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten.
This desire for wanting to be significant is touched on, but doesn't drive the film. Strange that such a character driven vehicle comes across more as performance driven without a real soul. The film's creators simply fail to get beneath the skin of the protagonist, and rely on Crowe's nervous facial tics and eccentric behavior to convey the message—this is an egocentric weirdo with mathematics on the brain, and doesn't get along with people very well.
Certainly the story of John Nash can be mined for dramatic potential of the insane genius—this is Rainman merging with Beethoven, or more aptly with Shine for the potential Oscar gold statuettes. But that only assures Russell Crowe of a certain nomination and does nothing for the director, so Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman manipulate the film into a first half Sixth Sense and second half Forrest Gump love story with Jennifer Connelly supplying the redemption—designed to WOW the audience and bring them to tears so the word of mouth will be positive.
Go ahead and ink in the names of Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly for Oscar nominations. Both perform admirably with the material given. Crowe delivers a reasonably accurate delusional intellectual that has a severe confidence problem when it comes to people, only relaxing when with his imaginary best friend, but more often staring blankly into space, averting his eyes, drooling, or utilizing a well developed nervous tic. He also performs the Jack Nicholson Oscar moment for his controlled violent jerking and twitching during a brutal electro-shock treatment.
Connelly's performance remains more low key and natural, but of course she is the sane one. Still her sincerity comes across well when investigating the sanity of her husband, and her scenes are genuinely heartfelt, even during the most melodramatic lines she is forced to deliver:
"Maybe the part of you that sees the difference between fantasy and reality isn't here (caressing his head), but here (touches his heart)"
But quiet moments don't win Oscar voters over (unless a landmark Meryl Streep tearful one), so the filmmakers provide Connelly with her Oscar opportunity in the bathroom, complete with a cathartic scream and broken mirror.
At least Connelly gets some honest moments to convey her frustration, and these seem real enough. Unfortunately the script never delves deep enough into Nash's psyche to get a real feel for what he is going through. Sure it shows the lit up words in the magazines and brightened stars to demonstrate Nash's ability to perceive patterns from chaos, and Opie turns up James Horner's overly sentimental score to signal us to feel suspense, love, and triumph. But those all smack of laziness and cheap film tricks. It's too bad that they seem to work on multiplex audiences—you can almost hear the sighs when the music turns especially syrupy. Those reactions only encourage mainstream Hollywood to give us more artificial sweeteners and leave the substance out.
At the end we wind up with hackneyed mush. The essential message: "All you need is love!" The Beatles taught us that back in the days that Nash was wandering zombie-like on the Princeton campus.
Anyone really looking for insights into the creative genius who emerged from insanity should read Sylvia Nasar's 1998 biography instead. Far more interesting details about Nash's racism, his paranoia against the U.S. government and foreign travel, and his son's schizophrenia are all left out (those just wouldn't play well to mainstream audiences/Academy members).
Or you can go to Nash's home page where he indicates that his "current research interests include logic, game theory, and cosmology and gravitation." His email address is listed, but he may not be able to respond after the added interest A Beautiful Mind has generated. Still, you'll have a better chance learning about Nash's character through other media. Howard's sappy movie covers some of the material, but is far more concerned with box office and Oscar glory.
DVD Extras:
Congratulate Universal Studios for including several extras on their DVD release, but the extra features disc is almost laughable. True to their nature Universal has packaged nothing but promotional blurbs on this disc, the most laughable being a straight advertisement for the soundtrack. The other featurettes all contain the Universal logo and proclaim A Beautiful Mind to be the greatest film project ever. Most interesting of the self promotional blurbs are the ones that show the aging make-up effects and an actual clip with the real John Nash explaining a mathematical theory to director Ron Howard (not that he, or any other normal person could understand Nash's ramblings, outside of his references to triangles and rectangles).
The more substantive extras are included on the main disc with separate feature commentaries by both Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. Howard's commentary remains straightforward and banal, hardly adding illumination to the film—he specializes in pointing out the obvious plot twists and seems pleased with the way his film attempts to trick the audience. He's also obsessed with comments about Russell Crowe's great acting and how he "uses his eyes—to communicate" (something we could say about any good actor).
Goldsman's commentary is more insightful and demonstrates that he did considerable research into Nash's character, and he makes some cogent comments on how he came to select his material. He also worked on the set quite a bit, so his observations point out the collaborative nature of the project and how Ron Howard develops loyalty—perhaps explaining why everyone is so vested in praising the film.
The deleted scenes with Howard's commentary have some interest for fans of the film, but he might as well have made a blanket statement that all cuts were done to aid the pacing of the overlong film. The Nash game sequence intrigues, but would have been overkill since the bar room visuals communicate the concept more visually and succinctly. You can see how the director had to sacrifice footage with his own father in a cameo as a paranoid schizophrenic—sure to be food for family gatherings, but at least it's preserved in the DVD extras.
The most irritating aspect of the main feature disc is technological. There is no easy way to switch from one commentary to the other, from straight movie to commentary, or from commentary to plain movie. To do so is possible, but only after making four or five clips. But no matter to me anymore. The film is mediocre at best, and I'm done watching it for all time.
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