INSIDE A BEAUTIFUL MIND

I'm sure there are over 75 reviews on this movie but I have to join the crowd. I tend to overrate everything that I like but I find it inconceivable that anyone could give this movie a low rating. I saw the movie with my wife and my good friend and fellow epinionator, Ed Williamson and we all loved it. Ed wrote an excellent epinion about the movie but as Ed pointed out Macresarf1 has written an unbelievable epinion with an obvious in-depth knowledge of the main character, John Nash.

In a way, it seems superfluous to write the typical review of "A Beautiful Mind" after several excellent epinions already exist but I will have a slightly different viewpoint that I will announce as a Spoiler Alert later in this review. To summarize, Dr. John Nash is a brilliant
mathematician who we first see as a young masters candidate at Princeton University just after WWII. As with many geniuses, he is an odd duck. What he possesses in intellectual skills, he completely lacks in social interactions. The only person he appears comfortable
with for the first 1/3 of the film is his roommate, Charles Herman (played by Paul Bettany). Nash is played by Russell Crowe in a performance that should garner several gold statues.

Nash is driven by a desire to make a discovery that will change the world and he comes up with a theory that does just that. He is elevated to professor status at Princeton and he also helps the U.S. government fight the Red Menace from Moscow by decoding secret messages. Along the way, the beautiful and charming Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) entices him into a relationship; they get married and have a son.

However, all in not well in the Nash household as the good professor develops a strong case of schizophrenia which threatens to end his professional career as well as his marriage. How this problem is resolved takes up the last half of the film.

THE ACTORS

I've already mentioned Russell Crowe who plays Dr. Nash. His job of acting ranks up there with some of the greatest performances I have seen. His role is not easy but he makes you feel his every pain; he makes you wonder at the miracle of the human mind.

Jennifer Connelly has always been one of my favorites. She manages to play Alicia as both an incredibly strong woman who is also exceptionally sensitive.

Paul Bettany is the perfect roommate for the socially backward Nash. He is outgoing, fun-loving and very supportive. Actually, Charles Herman plays the role to perfection.

Ed Harris is cast as the Government Undercover agent, William Parcher, who hires Nash for a top-secret job. Harris is another great actor who is very convincing in this role.

Judd Hirsh is Professor Herlinger of Princeton. He has to put up with Nash's strangeness but he ultimately is the first to recognize his genius.

Christopher Plummer plays the psychiatrist who is involved in Nash's treatments and he, as nearly always, also does an excellent job.

Finally, Ron Howard is the director. He has directed the movie to perfection. Howard has a mixed history of direction but this is Oscar caliber work.

There has been some criticism of Akiva Goldsman's screenplay. I totally disagree but I will save the reasons for that disagreement for the Spoiler section of this review. I found his work sensitive and as complete as it needed to be. If all of Nash's life had been included, the
already long movie (almost 3 hours) would have been 6 or 7 hours long.

SPOILER ALERT----------------------------------------------------------------------

Much of the criticism of this movie centers around Howard's and Goldsman's flights from reality to fantasy and back again. Specifically, at one moment we think what we are seeing is reality and then the next moment we find out that it is Nash's imagination. For some, this may be confusing.

To me, this was the essence of the greatness of "A Beautiful Mind". We are not viewing the movie from our comfortable theatre seats; we are viewing Dr. Nash's life from inside his mind. Not literally, mind you but figuratively. What he experiences, we experience and it is
difficult to determine what reality is. I have a person in my life who suffered through mental problems which were similar to Dr. Nash's. I'm sure many, if not all, of the readers of this review have family members or close friends who have the same problems. Howard's and Goldman's work and Crowe's performance are monuments to a man who overcame problems that would kill many of us or turn us into vegetables. By telling the story the way they did, the main message of the film is perfectly clear: That nothing is life is hopeless.

Pollyanna view? Perhaps. But if Dr. Nash could overcome his problems or rather learn to live with them and still become a productive member of society, almost anything is possible.

I salute everyone connected with the production of this masterpiece.