A Beautiful Mind
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Movie Reviews of A Beautiful Mind
Movie Review: Schizophrenia - Curse or Blessing?
Summary: 5 Stars
I thoroughly enjoyed 'A Beautiful Mind.' It's one of those very rare movies made for an audience of reasonably mature and intelligent adults as opposed to low IQ inner-city gangbangers with a mental age of around 14 who seem to be the target audience of most Hollywood fare today.
The plot is different and holds our interest to the end; the camera work is technical perfection with none of that faddish hand-held camera nonsense; the Princeton settings are gorgeous; and the actors are without exception excellent, with Russell Crowe giving a sensitive and totally convincing performance as the brilliant and afflicted mathematician, John Nash, a man suffering from schizophrenia.
But what exactly is schizophrenia? According to Wikipedia, it is "a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia).
This seems clear enough, since we have all been convinced of the reality of "mental" illness. But if we turn to Thomas Szasz Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry we find a highly intelligent professional psychiatrist informing us that, not only is schizophrenia a myth, but that there is no such thing as "mental illness", the term "illness" being something that can legitimately be applied only to physical bodies and not to minds, mind being something of an entirely different order.
So what's going on here? In the movie, Nash is eventually able to come to terms with his schizophrenia by realizing that the figures he continues to hallucinate, and who seem to him to be flesh-and-blood realities every bit as real as the people around him, are wholly illusory and simply projections of his own mind.
If he had been born in Asia and had come in contact with the non-dual perspective he might have learned that the whole of reality is similarly a projection of mind and entirely illusory; that his mind is only doing what is natural to it in projecting a world made entirely of Consciousness; and that the only difference between him and others is that, by some quirk, his mind has added a few extra events (which only he is able to perceive) to the world he shares with all of us. He might then have gone on to realize that, by leading him to a truer understanding of mind, what seemed to him at first to be a curse was in fact a Grace.
These notions lead us into the field of Nonduality and anyone interested in pursuing them further could do no better than to read a book such as Leo Hartong's Awakening to the Dream. Of the vast literature on Nonduality, this is the simplest and clearest account I've ever found.
But to return to the movie, please don't miss it. At its best, the modern movie can and should be a work of art, and the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' certainly qualifies as that.
Movie Review: Hardly at all like John Nash himself or anything he ever experienced--but that's okay!
Summary: 5 Stars
Although there are many movies about sports and the thrill of scoring a touchdown or home run, there are few if any movies that address the passion of intellectual achievement. Sure, there are plenty of science fiction movies about somebody conceiving, designing, and building some amazing vehicle or weapon in one fell swoop, (like Cochran and warp drive in Star Trek) but these are no more than fantasies which bear no relation to actual achievements in science and engineering. This movie about a character who we might (if we were to find ourselves in a sufficiently generous mood) be described as modeled on John Nash, comes close to bringing into view the world of applied mathematicians. Indeed, the first half hour of the movie dealing with Nash as a graduate student, strikes a familiar chord. Hanging out with your grad school buddies at the local pub to discuss the great issues of to day or to formulate unworkable strategies for picking up girls is wonderfully familiar. The unification of these two activities into the epiphany needed to supercharge your Ph.D. thesis was very satisfying--even if it had nothing to do with anything John Nash had ever experienced--or had any true relation to his work.
For my part, I don't care if any of this movie has anything at all to do with the real John Nash. I just like the way this movie conveys the excitement of conceiving of and working out a brilliant new theory. Never would I have thought that a scene consisting of someone scribbling on a few pieces of paper could seem so magical--and in a way that I can clearly identify with my own experience. The seasons pass--but there is John Nash joyfully working with his equations and diagrams! Also wonderful are the scenes involving Nash and his Ph.D. adviser. From the initial point where the adviser regards Nash as a kind of goof-off grad student who neither attends classes nor publishes journal articles--to the point where Nash finally wows him with his wonderful new take on economics and game theory--it certainly rang true to me! I also loved the Nash character's comment to a fellow student that "Classes will dull you mind and block the way to authentic creativity." I hated grad school courses with a passion and could not wait to get out from under them!
Of course most of this movie dealt with the mental problems of the pseudo Nash title character. These experiences are too far outside of my experience for me to identify with them in anything close to my visceral response to the film's portrait of Nash's alleged grad school days. This mental breakdown part of the story is actually more interesting in Sylvia Nasser's book, in accord with the veracity of the old "truth is stranger than fiction" axiom.
Movie Review: The Mind Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
Haunting music by James Horner. Beautiful Themes. Ron Howard has come out with a clean winner. Good performances by Russell Crowe and the beautiful Jennifer Connelly. I had not read about the Equilibrium concept of John Nash Jr. and the personal trauma he had with schizophrenia and delusions before he got the Nobel for Economics Sciences that he shared with Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi in 1994. When I saw this film, I came to know about Nash. It was nostalgia for me as I had studied close to Princeton University at Glassboro State College (now Rowan). I had visited Princeton and almost felt that I was there when I saw the locale scenes.
I would say that Ron Howard romanticizes a bit and makes the story flashy. He could have underplayed the screenplay a bit. Yet the scenes of paranoid schizophrenia and delusions come out good with able performances by Paul Bettany as "the prodigal roommate" and the maniacal defense agent Parcher played by Ed Harris. Akiva Goldsman has written a good story on how to patch figments of a cracked imagination. The best reason to stay with the movie is Alicia Nash played by Jennifer Connelly. Her suffering comes out so well in her reading of the character. The best part of the movie is John Nash Jr.'s relationship with his wife Alicia. I am touched by the way Jennifer Connelly approaches Crowe when he is her professor and brings out her love for him. I have learnt from this film that love is patience, love is endurance, love is not just after one's own benefits and that love shines. To conclude, this film picked up the AFI best actress award for Jennifer Connelly. She also picked up the Oscar that year and the movie was the Film of the Year. James Horner has breathed life into the narrative with his compellingly mesmerising score. If not for Howard Shore's magnificent work on the Fellowship of the Ring that year, this was easily the best effort in music. A thoroughly satisfying film on the mind beautiful.
Movie Review: Mental Illness Brought to the Screen Like Never Before
Summary: 5 Stars
A Beautiful Mind is one of those rare movies that grace the silver screen once in a lifetime and touch our hearts and our minds in ways that other films which have attempted to replicate with similar material, have yet to achieve. For years movie goers have witnessed the world of mental illness and its horrors from an outside perspective, much like visitors to a zoo, observing life in captivity from the other side of the cage. With faithful attention to detail and a respectful compassion for a world not yet understood in its unending complexities director Ron Howard draws the audience into a world of mystery, deception and intrigue, far removing us from our comfort zones. Then, as suddenly as it all began, the rug is ripped out from under our feet, forcing us to accept the fact that a world into which we have been drawn is not always a world that others can see.
This is the basic technique of filmmaking which Ron Howard skillfully exploits throughout the film to powerfully illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of John F. Nash's schizophrenia, a mental illness that is often characterized by disturbing delusions, hallucinations and bizarre thought patterns. As one who has suffered from mental illness for nearly thirty years I personally recommend this film not merely for its intellectual and artistic delivery of the subject matter but primarily for its overall sensitivity to an issue that has remained a subject of personal controversy in many circles of conversation, even in a century revolutionized by constant scientific discoveries and the evolutionary restructuring of psychiatric treatment.
Movie Review: An absolutely stunning performance from Russell Crow
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is based on the life of John Nash, the brilliant, Nobel winning mathematician and his extraordinary relationship with his wife, Alicia. I use the words `based on' deliberately as the film significantly strays from actual events and brings the spirit of Nash's life to the screen rather than being a true-to-life biopic. For those who want to learn more, I suggest Sylvia Nasar's book `The Beautiful Mind', which was also the source for the film. I do not want to say too much about the plot as if you have not yet seen the film, it will spoil the effect. The film attempts to put you inside Nash's head and experience events just as he did. For me, it worked extremely well. Try not to find out too much beforehand if you want to savour the full effect. Rest assured, however, that the film is very much about the human story of Nash and his devoted wife. The math, whilst integrated into the film in a variety of innovative and entertaining ways - the explanation of game theory has never been more interesting - remains in the background. The acting is superb: Russell Crow is revelatory in the role and how he missed out on an Oscar is hard to fathom. Jennifer Connelly did win an Oscar for her performance as Nash's wife, and the film also took best picture, best screenplay, and best director awards. They were well deserved. For a thoughtful, deeply moving, and incredibly inspiring film: this is it. If you manage to watch it without knowing too much about the contents beforehand, it can also be disorientating as well - just as Nash experienced his life.