Ron Howard's latest film, A Beautiful Mind, is also a beautiful
movie. In fact, it's so beautiful, that it seems planned and packaged
just for the Oscars, and just in time for Christmas. The film stars last
year's Oscar-winning actor, Russell Crowe, as the real-life John Forbes
Nash, the mathematical genius who, while a graduate at Princeton
University in the 1940s, discovered a principle equation that changed
economic theory. But his prodigious career was sidetracked by his struggle
with schizophrenia, almost destroying his family and himself. The irony
of his predicament was that the drugs that kept his psychosis in check
also prevented him from thinking coherently. In order for him to think,
he couldn't take his medication, which lead to perpetual delusions. He
eventually learned to use his own mind's logic to keep his thoughts in
check, even though he still suffered from schizophrenia The movie portrays
this struggle, and shows how he learned to live with his illness, while
going on to win the Nobel Prize and continuing to teach mathematics at
Princeton University.
Howard's treatment of the characters, plot and atmosphere are all
done with his usual gifted talent for direction. But here, he employs
an interesting story-telling twist: the first half of the film is
viewed from Nash's perspective alone, so we're just as confused,
surprised and shocked as he is when his psychosis manifests itself,
blurring the line between reality and paranoia. Then, the perspective
changes to an objective viewpoint, compelling us to feel sympathy as
an outside observer. Crowe's portrayal of Nash's gradual deterioration
into schizophrenia is believable, and as he devolves both mentally
and physically, we are lead through his emotional and psychological
struggle. It's Crowe's performance and Howard maturity as a director
that will make this film an Oscar contender.
Yet, despite its wonderfulness, the film also has its problems. Yes,
it's a sweet, good-looking film, but you almost feel pulled into the same
old Hollywood formula that worked in the 80s and 90s. We're not seeing
anything we haven't seen before, especially from Howard. It also seems
to be a fad to make dramas about a genius who is forced to deal with
psychological problems, while keeping the audience somewhat unsure about
what's real and what's not. This trend started with Good Will Hunting
and The Sixth Sense and continues directly into this week's Vanilla
Sky. In all these strength of the films are the struggles between the
two extremes of the protagonist's mind. Not that A Beautiful Mind
is another Good Will Hunting or Finding Forester, but their
common element is that they pique our fascination and curiosity about a
brilliant mind being in a confused state, using the same psycho-dilemma
technique.
The ace-in-the-hole with A Beautiful Mind, however, is
that it's based on reality, which has a disproportionately stronger
emotional effect than it might otherwise have.
By contrast, movies like
Good Will Hunting have to be several notches better at character
development and personal triumph to have the equivalent emotional impact
as their reality-based counterparts. As a strict comparison of movies,
the characters in Hunting were far deeper, and the drama more
compelling than in A Beautiful Mind, but one can't tell an audience
that. True, Nash's actual life may have more interesting because of his
being real, but it's the director's job to make us feel it without the
reality check as a crutch. Remember, the film was inspired by events
in Nash's life, and is also based in part on the biography of the same
name by Sylvia Nasar, so more of this movie really is more fiction than
real. With this much artistic license, we shouldn't be so willing to
excuse oversimplified and over-dramatized accounts of events, but we do
anyway. That was Howard's trump card.
That said, just because the movie wasn't as strong as it could have
been doesn't mean I didn't like it. I did - in fact, I think the film is
excellent, and well worth attending with family or friends this holiday
season. It's a feel-good film that we deserve at this time, and there's
nothing wrong with that.
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