Cinema World Review:
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Biography, Drama
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher
Plummer
"After a brilliant but asocial mathematician, John Nash, accepts
secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the
nightmarish." - IMDB Website
Review: This movie hands down is one of the best movies I've ever
watched. Ron Howard did an outstanding job on the storyline and
the production and it is beyond what I've expected. The story is
based on a true story of an American mathematician genius call
John Nash who discovered the game theory, differential geometry
and partial differential equations. Nash's work was evolutional and
have provided great insight on modern science and the complex
systems found in daily life.
The movie started off set in 1949 describing the young John Nash
in his Freshman year at Princeton University. They portrait Nash as
a very socially awkward student in front of his peers and does not
like to follow the crowd; he tends to say things that majority find it
blunt or imperceptive which leads them to misunderstand him a lot.
He made a really good friend name Charles which is his flat mate.
Although Nash is a natural mathematical genius, his intelligence
came with a cost which gave him a lot of anxiety and paranoia. He
was easily stressed and will keep dwelling on the problems he can't
solve. Nash have a habit on solving human natural psychology
through mathematical theories as if he is trying to code break
human's emotions. Throughout the movie, we are very in depth with
the character's personality. He is very determined because what he
want to solve still haven't been found, he want to solve his own
equation. "I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's
only in the mysterious equation of love that any local reasons can
be found."
Halfway through the film, we start to acknowledge John Nash had
joined a secret international communist organization, and is trying
to prevent a terrorist attack by decoding where the Russian's have
stored the nuclear bomb. He then became very engaged in this
secret mission and start to withdraw himself from his family (his wife
Alisa and their new born son). Nash was first diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia when he gave a lecture talk in Columbia
University in 1959, his lecture became incomprehensible and the
audience immediately felt something was wrong. The movie shows
how Dr. Rosen, a psychiatrist came to visit the seminar and made
Nash panic; the scene ended by he drugging Nash and quickly
escalated out of the campus.
It was absolutely mind blowing when I discover that Nash was
actually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and that he had
mixed delusional thinking and reality together. The secret
international communist organization as well as Nash's roommate
'Charles' never existed. It had all became a shock to everyone, and
what really took off was how we can see Nash in the movie trying to
overcome his biggest problem with his wife. It must have been a
great journey full of pain and struggle.
Through time Nash gradually began to intellectually reject some of
his delusions, though he told the professor he still sees them right
before he receives his Nobel Prize. He believes it is a waste of
hopeless effort to stop his delusions, everyone has flaws and it
depends how you act upon it. At present he seems to be always
thinking rationally in the style that is characteristic for scientist.
It was an incredibly moving ending through his recognition and his
later career. I personally loved the part where he made his speech
and won the prize "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences" in
1994. The tremendous support from his wife and the strong hidden
meaning about Hope and Love was truly inspiring.