2001 A Beautiful Mind

2001 A Beautiful Mind


"Find a truly original idea.  It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself.  It is the only way I will ever matter."

This is quite a change for Russell Crowe, both appearance and performance-wise, from his Oscar-winning role in Gladiator the year before.  From honorable, bulked up warrior Maximus, Crowe has transformed into eclectic, schizophrenic, real-life genius John Nash.  I don't think the characters could be much more different.  Though Russell Crowe was very good in Gladiator, as he is in almost everything, I think he should have won for THIS performance.  He was truly excellent at portraying the complicated Nobel Prize winning mathematician from his college days through his later years, capturing his quirky nature and his mental illness expertly.  His portrayal of Nash is as a charming, but socially stilted man with an increasing paranoia that develops into full-blown schizophrenia.  He talks to himself in public as he tries to solve mathematical quandaries, and has a peculiar jerky walk and twitchy mannerisms.  In one scene, when he is walking on campus as an older man, a student walks behind him imitating his unusual stride, as other students laugh, which really offended me.  I think it is particularly upsetting because it's sadly realistic.  I just read an article today about a video that's gone viral showing a man and his young son both imitating the walk of a ten year old girl with cerebral palsy to mock her.  Infuriatingly wicked and heartless.  How can people be that cruel?  I've gotten off track, but that video is fresh in my mind.




Jennifer Connelly plays Nash's wife, Alicia, who loves him in spite of his peculiar, blunt nature (Nash: "I find you attractive.  Your aggressive moves toward me indicate that you feel the same way.  But still, ritual requires that we continue with a number of platonic activities before we have sex.  I am proceeding with these activities, but in point of actual fact, all I really want to do is have intercourse with you as soon as possible.  Are you gonna slap me now?"), and stands by him through his illness (in real life, the two divorce, though they do remarry later in life, but the movie version is more romantic).  Nash later thanks her in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I've made the most important discovery of my life.  It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found.  I'm only here tonight because of you.  You are the only reason I am.  You are all my reasons."


The movie is originally entirely from Nash's perspective, so his progressing schizophrenia is not apparent, and takes the audience by surprise.  When it switches to Alicia's perspective for a time, we discover that many of the things we've taken for granted in Nash's life are not real.  The college roommate and best friend, Charles (Paul Bettany), and Charles's niece, Marcee, don't exist.  The secret military code breaking he has been doing for a government agent (Ed Harris) is all in his mind.

Doctors try to make Nash realize the truth of his delusions, but he resists.  He takes medications, which make him unable to work or be intimate with his wife.  He goes off the medications and the delusions come back full swing.  He again becomes convinced that his hallucinations are real, and that the doctors were tricking him as part of a plot.  Jennifer Connelly is amazing as Alicia (she won Best Actress for the part), who struggles to stay strong for her husband and deal with his illness.  In particular, the scene where she finally lets all her emotions out, shutting herself in the bathroom to scream and cry and throw things, was really incredible.

"I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible." -Alicia

Finally she can't take it anymore when his behavior leads him to be unsafe around the baby and her, and she runs out of the house to her car in the rain, but at that moment Nash finally has an epiphany that breaks through the fog and makes him realize the truth of his condition: "She never gets old!  Marcee can't be real; she never gets old!"  He decides to work with his illness, instead of curing it.  He accepts that these people he sees are hallucinations, and lives with that realization.  Sometimes they taunt him, sometimes they coax him to acknowledge them.  This is very hard on him at first, especially letting go of Charles and Marcee.  He says goodbye to them, which is hard to watch: "Charles, you've been a very good friend to me.  The best.  But I won't talk to you again.  I just can't.  Same goes for you, baby girl.  Goodbye."  Marcee is crying and he strokes her head before turning his back on them.  Though they stay with him, he can recognize them as false and choose to ignore them: "I've gotten used to ignoring them and I think, as a result, they've kind of given up on me.  I think that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares, Martin, we've got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive."  At the same time, Alicia decides to stay with him and help him to work through his issues instead of sending him to the hospital:

Nash: And then, on the way home, Charles was there again.  Sometimes I miss talking to him.  Maybe Rosen is right.  Maybe I have to think about going back to the hospital.
Alicia: Maybe try again tomorrow.



By the end, though he still lives with his illness, and knows he always will ("I still see things that are not here.  I just choose not to acknowledge them."), he has a successful life as a professor at the university, with good friends and colleagues that respect his work, as well as his loving family.

It is a good movie, very moving and different, if not really all that close to the true story of Nash's life.  I don't mind a movie improving on the real story to make it happier or more interesting.  I think the actors were the key to this movie.  Aside from the amazing Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, the supporting cast was excellent, with real care given to the casting of the more minor players: Paul Bettany, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer (his doctor), Josh Lucas, Adam Goldberg, and Anthony Rapp (the last three play colleagues/friends).

Definitely a movie worth watching.

Other movies of the same caliber were Moulin Rouge! (a fantastic, visually fascinating movie), Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (the best of the trilogy in my opinion, though Return of the King won the Oscar, most likely as a tribute to the trilogy as a whole), and Gosford Park (a great British murder mystery that explores the relationships between old time aristocrats and their servants -an idea which the writer of the screenplay, Julian Fellowes, has now expanded into the incredible TV series Downton Abbey.  It was an excellent year for movies.