Best Picture: #74
Original Release Date: December 21, 2001
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Director: Ron Howard
Quick Impressions:
When A Beautiful Mind first came out, it reminded me of events in my own life and filled me with a visceral revulsion. I didn’t like the movie. It was hard for me to watch. It wasn’t the movie’s fault. At the time, I had recently been in a relationship that had some elements in common with the film. Twenty years have now passed. (Twenty years is a long time!) In a spirit of fairness, then, surely I can set aside my own feelings when I talk about A Beautiful Mind, just as in the film, the fictionalized John Nash attempts to ignore his hallucinations and move on with his life.
Well…I’ve been staring at that opening paragraph for an hour now, so I’ll level with you. I don’t know that I’ll ever be capable of great objectivity when it comes to this movie. (How can you talk about objectivity when evaluating a movie, anyway? At least I admit my bias. Be aware as you read on that I’ve never liked A Beautiful Mind for reasons beyond the film’s control. Take what I say here with a grain of salt.)
Back in 2002, even I had to admit that Russell Crowe had already shown great versatility in his career. He gave three dramatically different performances in The Insider, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. Still, as I watched the Oscars that year, I really, really didn’t want him to win Best Actor again. (I’m sorry, Russell Crowe.) Was I being unfair to him? Yes. But think of all the talented actors who never get to win even one Oscar! (People like (in 2002) Morgan Freeman, Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer, and most other actors who exist!)
Of course, my rank hypocrisy was exposed by my elation when Denzel Washington won that night instead. (I mean, it was his second Oscar, too! Worse still, I hadn’t even seen Training Day yet at the time of the ceremony! But all of Denzel Washington’s performances are good, so I knew he was deserving. Plus, who doesn’t like Denzel Washington? Not only is he a great actor, but (according to some random magazine article I read in the 90s) he also has a perfectly symmetrical face.) Somewhat ridiculously, I didn’t reverse my negative opinion of Russell Crowe until 2007 when I was shocked to enjoy his performance in 3:10 to Yuma. I’ve liked almost everything he’s done since. I’m not sure why it took me so long to warm to him. (Sorry again, Russell Crowe.) (I’m not actually a member of the Academy, so it’s not like my animosity mattered. But I can’t help imagining a silently weeping Russell Crowe as the only person reading this review.)
Meanwhile, even though I didn’t like A Beautiful Mind at all, I was happy to see Ron Howard and Jennifer Connelly win Oscars. (I was happy for Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent, too.) (I’m really not a malicious person. I feel terrible about rooting (so hard) against Russell Crowe.)
The Good:
Making a movie about contemplating equations can’t be easy. This isn’t like Stand and Deliver where you have a charismatic teacher and students studying calculus to beat the odds. In A Beautiful Mind, John Nash spends most of his time lost in his own head, thinking about complex equations that are not at all accessible to the average movie audience. It’s always hard to dramatize the creation of academic or artistic work. For one thing, the creative process usually takes a long time.
But if the subject of the film is composing symphonies, the audience can hear the music. If they’re painting or sculpting, the audience can see the art (sometimes even as it progresses). If they’re cooking, the audience can hear the sizzle (and imagine the taste). If they’re writing poetry, the audience can usually hear the finished verse (unless the film doesn’t have permission to use it, and then they can watch Gwyneth Paltrow recite Chaucer to cows). (And hopefully if the protagonist is writing novels or plays, they’re being inspired by their real life which the audience is also witnessing in the film.)
Math is trickier. Most people will not be able to solve the types of equations Nash is working on in this film. (Even he can’t solve them!) (I’ll be brutally honest here. Nash could write down a complex problem for me, and I would be unable to tell if what he had written was already solved or not! So I would have been the wrong director for this film for sure!)
So I applaud A Beautiful Mind for finding so many cinematically appealing ways to dramatize a math prodigy contemplating his work. I joked a lot with my daughter about the film’s semi-constant spinning in circles, but at least every time the spinning started, I knew the math was happening. All of the scribbling on windows is nice, too. (I don’t know if Nash really did that, but it’s convenient for letting us see his thoughts and how they create both a barrier between and a lens linking him and the world beyond.)
While we watched together, my daughter was lamenting about how much she misses Best Picture winners from the 1920s-1980s. She complained, “Now movies don’t use the same symbols and techniques, so it’s harder for me to analyze them.”
I told her, “In this movie, everybody turns around in circles all the time, especially the camera. That symbolizes math. Triangles symbolize a coded message. And Paul Bettany symbolizes D.H. Lawrence, apparently the only novelist that English majors read.”
The spinning and triangles are kind of heavy-handed, but I do think they basically work. And all joking aside, Paul Bettany gives the only performance I actually enjoy in this film, playing by far my favorite character. (To be clear, Jennifer Connelly’s Oscar-winning performance is deserving. I just don’t enjoy watching it.) Obviously Charles provides excitement, camaraderie, and kinetic chaos sorely missing from Nash’s life. (I love the scene when they push the desk out the window. On subsequent viewings of the film, you really wonder what that looks like to the people walking below.)
If you have never seen A Beautiful Mind, I’m warning you now, I’m about to spoil a huge plot twist in the next paragraph.
Paul Bettany’s Charles is such a welcome presence in Nash’s life. The movie always has ten times the positive energy when he’s on screen. And the moment when the audience discovers that Charles doesn’t actually exist is irresistibly engaging. Watching back in 2001, a huge part of me didn’t want to respond positively to this moment of discovery For one thing, I didn’t like the movie as a whole. For another, it’s kind of a cheap trick. It’s such a gimmicky move. But I do think it works because I enjoyed it in spite of myself, and watching this time, I found myself looking forward to that moment in the film, wondering what my daughter (unaware of the twist) would think.
Grudgingly, I’ll admit that it’s a pretty good idea to take a device that fits right in with popular movies at the time—like Fight Club and The Sixth Sense—and use it as a way of dramatizing the hallucinations of someone suffering from schizophrenia. It’s a good idea (even though I’ve read that in real life, Nash had only auditory hallucinations). If the audience is surprised (like they should be) this helps them understand and empathize with the level of confusion, fear, and horror felt by John and Alicia when somebody they have believed for years to be 100 percent real turns out to be imaginary. For Alicia, this is just as earth-shattering as for John himself. And for the audience, it is pretty shocking, too. (Most people probably have a sense that something strange is going on with the Ed Harris character, but Charles? Why would we question John’s oldest friend. He seems far too eccentric and full of life not to exist. This deliberate trick played on the audience helps people watching to understand why schizophrenia (or any delusional psychosis) can be so deeply frightening and unsettling. Imagine knowing someone since college, then discovering the person has never been real!
On a second watch, I noticed multiple hints that Charles is not real. John always hears his voice before we see Charles in the flesh. He turns up (and disappears) at surprising moments (which are sometimes oddly conveniently, sometimes distinctly inconvenient). And he has a way of appearing just when John most needs to see a friendly face. On this viewing, I thought in bemusement, “Of course, John’s mind has completely generated Charles. He is John’s creation. It’s odd, then, that Charles possesses so many qualities that John sorely lacks. If he can create Charles, why can’t he be more like him?” (This is worth pondering, I think.) I also like Ed Harris as the much more mysterious and sinister Parcher, but he never feels as real and fleshed out as Charles.
The film does a good job, too, of prolonging our sense of confusion, dragging out the suspense as much as possible. Watching for the first time, my daughter didn’t know what was true for quite a while. “But what if he is a spy?” she wondered. “What if he is crazy but also a spy?” It’s hard to be completely sure, and if we have doubts, imagine how difficult accepting a completely altered version of reality must be for John.
This portion of the film when John is first hospitalized and then when he first comes home works better for me than the rest. I guess I lied about only liking Paul Bettany. Christopher Plummer (whose work I usually enjoy) has a good (if brief) part in this, too. And I do think it’s interesting to watch John get insulin shock therapy (though I wish the film explained how the treatment is intended to work in greater detail). I also like the way the film shows us why (despite John’s visibly deteriorating physical condition (and Crowe conveys this well), the degree of his mental illness passes unnoticed for so long. Most people don’t understand the work he does. To the untrained eye (and even to the trained eye), the codes John looks for as a spy are not so different from the impenetrable equations he’s always trying to solve.
Best Scene:
The revelation that Charles does not exist is quite powerful and memorable. What else can I say? (Several scenes before the big reveal, my daughter watched John and Charles sink onto a bench in unison and joked, “Why did they sit down almost in sync?” I hadn’t noticed that detail myself, and the fact that she called it out as a joke rather than recognizing it as a clue (to a twist she did not see coming) brought me some pleasure.)
Best Scene Visually:
Another scene I waited for eagerly on this re-watch is the moment when Alicia wanders out to the shed and opens the door, then beholds in horror what has been going on with John lately. We also get our first look at what John has actually been up to this time. This leads to the shock of the baby in the bathtub.
Best Action Sequence:
Perhaps the defining moment of the film comes when John notices something unusual about Marcee (Vivien Cardonne) and runs out to Alicia’s car. (This aspect of Nash’s story is so fascinating, but I’ve also read that it’s not exactly true. The way he’s simply ignoring the positive symptoms of schizophrenia is oversimplified by the film.) Unable to believe his doctors, John now sees for himself that he cannot trust everything his senses tell him. The intensity of the moment is appealing (although when I learned later that Nash had auditory, not visual hallucinations, I began to question everything about this discovery, and that undermined the moment’s power somewhat for me.
Most Oscar-Worthy Moment (Jennifer Connelly):
I’ve always liked the scene when John rolls over in bed, apparently frustrated by the side effects of his medication. If there’s one thing psychiatric medication will cause for sure, it’s side effects. (Will the medication work for you? Who knows! But the side effects are guaranteed. Which ones? That’s what you’ll have the fun of discovering. Will the side effects ever stop? Maybe. Will they stop if you discontinue continue the medication? Maybe. If you have a serious mental illness, can you ever stop taking medication? You can. Do you enjoy cracking secret codes with Ed Harris out in the shed?
If you’re asking yourself, “Wouldn’t this moment be an example of an Oscar worthy scene by Russell Crowe?” Yes, I guess so. Crowe does do a commendable job of showing us Nash’s descent into paranoia, as well as his misery and frustration after leaving the hospital and trying to adjust to his medication.
But the moment I meant to reference with Jennifer Connelly comes right after this scene in bed. After John rolls over, rebuffing her overtures, Alicia gets out of bed, walks into the bathroom, and sits on the closed toilet, staring at the sink in front of her. Then she fills just a small portion of a glass with tap water and takes a drink. I had forgotten about this scene, so watching this time, I thought, “Why is she doing that?” It’s such a small amount of water. How could drinking that little tap water help anything? Then, suddenly, she throws the glass at the mirror and screams in frustration. Watching her release her pent up frustration like that is surprisingly satisfying. Her situation is so impossible. And that’s certainly the best use of a glass of water under those circumstances, so I do like her performance here. (Of course, the scene is so satisfying that it does seem a bit contrived, but I mean, this is a movie. So that’s fine.)
The Negatives:
To be clear, I have no problems with Connelly’s performance at any point. She has many memorable moments, and she’s able to show us Alicia’s various, evolving responses to vastly changing circumstances. (She and Josh Lucas (whose performance I also like) have a nice exchange about how she’s holding up fairly late in the film that’s much more subtle than the water glass scene.)
What I have a problem with is Connelly’s character as written. Back when this movie came out, I knew so many people who watched and commented that Alicia was so heroic, admirable, imitable. This was hard for me because while I totally believe (for selfish, self-interested reasons as well as altruistic ones) that the mentally ill are deserving of love and compassion and that you shouldn’t leave someone just because they have a mental illness, I also believe that you shouldn’t have to stay with someone just because they have a mental illness. If someone is hurting you or poses a threat to your safety or well-being, you shouldn’t stay with them. If someone refuses treatment for mental illness and hurts you repeatedly, you should get away from that person. (I realize that the movie isn’t saying that you should stay in an abusive relationship, but when I watched it originally, I felt like it was saying that to me, and when I watch it now, I still can’t shake that feeling. It’s my problem, not the movie’s. For the most part.)
What really irritated me after this watch was discovering that the idea the film puts forward of Alicia as the self-sacrificing and devoted wife wasn’t even true. Alicia Nash didn’t just send the baby to live with her mother. She went to live with her mother, too. She and John got divorced in 1963, and she left him. He did move in with her again in 1970, but that was because he had nowhere else to go, and they lived as roommates. The Nashs did remarry later. In 2001. I know movies almost always take liberties like this to make things more romantic for the screen. I understand that. And I’m not saying that the historical Alicia Nash doesn’t deserve praise and admiration for continuing to care for John even during periods of their life when they weren’t romantically involved. I’m just saying that the favorite Hollywood movie trope of the noble woman sacrificing her own well-being to help the tortured genius she loves can sometimes be a dangerous myth to perpetuate.
But, as I’ve admitted, this is mostly my problem, not the movie’s. And I feel deeply conflicted about it because in many ways, I have more in common with John Nash than I do with Alicia. So how can I argue against her staying with John? (I would be arguing against my own self interest! And I would never leave someone I love just because they were struggling with their mental health. I do commend the movie’s desire to promote compassion for and attempted understanding of mental illness. Still, I think the film unintentionally sends a dangerous message when John (after secretly hiding medication that he needs and has promised to take) almost drowns the baby (accidentally), then knocks Alicia to the ground (accidentally), and then the doctor advises her to have John committed, and then John refuses treatment, and yet Alicia decides that despite everything she’s staying right there with him. I mean, consider. That is not what Alicia actually did in real life.
Watching John’s story unfold is unpleasant for me, too. Crowe gives a good performance, but the subject matter stresses me out. I don’t have schizophrenia, but I can relate to a lot of what John goes through in this film. So…I don’t know. This movie is just no fun for me to watch, and I will probably never enjoy it. I do enjoy Paul Bettany, though.
Also why does Russell Crowe sound so much like Colonel Sanders? (That’s what my daughter wanted to know, and it’s a good question.) I’ve listened to the real John Nash speak, and his accent is not at all like Crowe’s. Nobody I’ve known from West Virginia speaks like Russell Crowe in this movie, but I will acknowledge that it is possible that I just know too few people from West Virginia to get an accurate sampling of the state’s (no doubt varied) regional dialects.
To give my daughter the purest viewing experience possible, I tried to play my dislike of this film as close to the chest as I could. But my daughter didn’t like it, either (for unrelated reasons). At first, she just found it boring and started complaining about her math class. I hoped that the scenes with Ed Harris would make her more excited and curious, but she remained bored (and exasperated for John for becoming a spy and endangering his new family). Not until Nash’s schizophrenia was revealed did she begin to get interested. But ultimately the movie left her cold. We’ve watched less than an hour of Chicago, and she’s already said how much more she likes it at least four times.
Overall:
A Beautiful Mind commendably uses a popular plot device (at the time) to help the audience to understand how disorienting and frightening some positive symptoms of schizophrenia can be to the person experiencing them (and that person’s loved ones). Russell Crowe does an excellent job of showing Nash’s gradual decline, and Jennifer Connelly deserves her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, even if I do have some problems with the way the character is portrayed. I will probably never like this film, but Paul Bettany is fun to watch.