beautifmind

Once again I find myself wondering what the big deal is. At the same time, I am irked with director
Ron Howard. “A Beautiful Mind” is a showcase of feats of acting by performers like Russell Crowe
and Jennifer Connelly. Aside from these relentless performances however, the film is mired in an
inaccurate ruse by Howard and the screenwriters.

See, this is the supreme difficulty with “biopics.” Howard was likely fascinated with the life of John
Nash, a mathematician who was a genius, or was he? Crowe plays Nash in a harrowing story about
a mathematician so brilliant he’s completely antisocial. He mutters, stares at pigeons so as to look
for patterns, and generally is determined to be creepy and off-putting.

One day Nash is approached by a government agent, played by Ed Harris, who tells him that they
need his abilities to find Communist codes hidden in American publications and they need him to
help them break these secret messages that could undermine the integrity of the American
government. At the same time, Jennifer Connelly is one of his students at school and falls in love
with him. Why? I have no idea.

This is an inherent problem with the movie. Nash, played to the hilt in an uncompromising and great
performance by Crowe, is so idiosyncratic I was wondering why a woman like Connelly would fall for
him. But the real problems are yet to come.

Well, finally it dawns on Nash and the audience that not everything he sees is real. See, he’s
psychotic. Whole realities aren’t actually there so he can’t trust anything in his world and he
becomes one of those bipolar, paranoid conspiracy freaks as he apparently did in real life as well.
Howard subjects us to so much that isn’t real that we begin to question the integrity of the story.
Can we trust what Howard is giving us? It is a frustrating and brilliant tactic at the same time.
Howard shows us with frightening success what Nash’s world feels like and yet we also come away
wondering how much of Howard’s storytelling we can trust.

With a little digging and we find that Howard’s depiction of Nash is more idealized than it probably
should have been. According to some sources, Nash also dealt with bisexuality, a factor that
severely disrupted his marriage. At the same time, Connelly’s character is shown to be a devoted
wife throughout his trials and tribulations, but in reality, she divorced him and only later continued to
aid her ex-husband’s mental problems. There were also allegations that Nash was anti-Semitic, a
claim also conveniently not explored in this film.

Crowe, Connelly and the rest of the cast including Harris and Christopher Plummer are blameless.
Their performances are spirited and professional. Howard’s direction also makes the film compelling
and watchable, but his narrative misdirection puts deceiving dramatic spin on Nash’s life that is
tantamount to fraud. Were it not for the superb performances and competent filmmaking, I would be
more severe with this movie.

Entertaining, but don’t take everything for granted. The message is a good one, even if history says
it happened otherwise.