March 19, 2003

‘A Beautiful Mind’ won how many Oscars?
DIVERSIONS EDITOR DAN TAKES ON ALL-STAR CONTRIBUTING WRITER
COLIN CONCERNING A MOVIE THAT INVOLVES A CRAZY MATHEMATICIAN

DAN SAYS

The reason "A Beautiful Mind" worked so well as a movie was it took the audience on so many highs, lows, twists and turns, it was hard to not feel like you were on a roller coaster at the end of the movie.

We follow the life of a brilliant mathematician, John Nash, as his life is built around his mind. This crumbles to the ground when we learn the majority of the people in his life are figments of his imagination, due to his schizophrenia.

Nash was an over-confident man who thought he had control over the movie. When I saw it, I had no idea other main characters weren’t real and didn’t believe it at first either. I was thinking along the same lines as Nash that these people were too important to him, and he had done too much with them, for them to be imaginary.

They were imaginary and this movie can deliver some pretty low points. The scenes where Nash is in the mental hospital and the life he leads while on suffocating medication are very difficult to watch. There is a man who was on top of the world in code breaking at one moment, and at the next couldn’t do a word search in the newspaper without help.

One of the most powerful moments of the movie was the scene after he was allowed back into Yale to study in the library. His former rival was dean of the school and Nash was forced to ask him to let Nash hang around, because he and his wife thought it would help him battle his disease.

I was cringing in this scene, Nash’s rival always seemed just as cocky and mean as Nash once did, but he saw how desperate Nash was. We then see Nash go to Yale every day for many years, sometimes having mental breakdowns in the middle of a courtyard and other times having students taunt him in a cruel manner. He always went back the next day, showing his strength and resolves to gain control over his disease and his mind.

I don’t care if it’s all historically correct, or even that it’s based off of a true story. I accept there are evil wizards in the "Lord of the Ring" series and that there are Jedi knights with light sabers in the "Star Wars" movies, and still enjoy them all the same. The fact that the real Nash wasn’t as upstanding as the Nash in the movie makes the fictional Nash no less enjoyable.

This is a movie of a man overcoming more in a lifetime than anyone should ever have to. We see Nash depend on his wife and friends and see an amazing example of human strength.

COLIN SAYS

"A Beautiful Mind" pulled off one of the more impressive tricks on its audience in all of filmdom. No, not that it made you think three characters existed who were just hallucinations, but that it was a good film when in reality it is manipulative and false.

My problem with the movie is that it says absolutely nothing about the turmoils of schizophrenia. Oh sure, we see the TV movie suspense of John Nash forgetting his baby is taking a bath. We see Russell Crowe scrunching his eyebrows and looking frustrated, suffering beautifully for the camera.

What we don’t see is Nash and his wife Alicia actually having a deep, emotional conversation about his plight. Because that would require good screenwriting, which is something Akiva Goldsman knows little about. This is the man responsible for such tripe as "Batman Forever," "Batman & Robin" and "Lost in Space."

In fact, Goldsman efficiently liberates "A Beautiful Mind" from any authenticity about the reality of its real-life characters or of the horrors of paranoid schizophrenia. What he provides is a neatly packaged piece of melodrama suitable for Lifetime.

But it’s all worth it, to make a Hollywood movie, right? A movie with "a message." A movie that will blind the academy, manipulatively pull at heart strings, making the audience feel guilty if they don’t forcibly empathize with this all-too-fictional Nash. A move that ultimately – and unjustly – won it the best picture Oscar.

What we are not privy to, what would have made "A Beautiful Mind" a truly powerful film about one man’s tumultuous human condition, are the less-pleasant facts about Nash’s life. Gone is the fact that Nash cheated on his wife, Alicia. Repeatedly. With men.

But none of this hardly matters, though, because at the end of the day all that does matter is the love of a good woman, such as Alicia. It also goes without saying that Goldsman must cut out the fact that Alicia left Nash and they remain unmarried.

Then there is clumsy writing. In the last half hour of the movie, Nash’s son jumps 10 years with every scene, and each random actor barely discharges a sentence.

Hollywood was so enamored with this film because it was so easily Hollywoodizeable: Simply turn a real plight into a "Sixth Sense"-like twist. Next, eliminate anything that makes a hero look less than perfect. Then, blind your audience with its message, rendering them incapable of seeing this film for what it really is.