Am I Crazy? Are You?

There are only a few movies that I want to see because of the lead actor or actress--I'm not a big fan of the whole "movie star" thing--I'd much rather see a movie that's well written with no-name (but good) actors than one where the entire time I'm watching, I'm thinking, "Oh, this is TOM HANKS on an island..." Or maybe, "This is BRUCE WILLIS as an army guy in a Nazi prison..." That could be why I waited so long to watch "A Beautiful Mind." After all, the script is from Akiva Goldsman, the same guy whose posterity I condemned via secret ritual for writing "Batman and Robin" in 1997. Alas, we all grow and change over time, and I decided after seeing so many positive reviews that I've give the flick a chance.

Good thing I did. Flying in the face of what I just wrote, I have LOVED Russell Crowe's performances in the films I've seen him in so far. These include "L.A. Confidential," "The Insider," and "Gladiator." In these films, he's presented three entirely different characters, and acted all of them extremely well, to the point that if you didn't know that he was playing these characters, you wouldn't know it was "Russell Crowe." An amazing actor. And in "A Beautiful Mind," we get yet another complicated, excellent performance.

Crowe plays John Nash, a mathematics student and later professor who is looking for a Unique Idea to make his mark on the world. He feels that he won't be worthwhile until he makes a difference (if only more of us felt this way), and sees his Unique Idea as the way to do that. He's undeniably brilliant in the world of mathematics, but is somewhat awkward when it comes to human interactions. It turns out what he needs is a Unique Woman to find that chink in his armor and worm her way into his heart. He finds it in the person of Alicia, played by the beautiful Jennifer Connelly. I really know Connelly best from "Labyrinth" and "The Rocketeer," but also caught her performances in "Inventing the Abbots" and "Requiem for a Dream," and I'm impressed all the way around. She's a looker, but a fine actress as well, who turns her characters into complex, real people. Good Choice.

As their relationship continues (the movie spans years, decades even...), we discover that Nash has accepted a top secret job with the government, one that Alicia doesn't know about. This secret is one that the entire movie is built upon, and the job, which includes reporting to Ed Harris' character, becomes a life-threatening one for John Nash. As the years go by, Nash's behavior becomes more paranoid, and more erratic...until it begins to endanger Alicia's life, and the life of their child.

It turns out Nash is a paranoid schizophrenic, and parts of his life which we've assumed were real (very big parts of his life) have been illusions. I won't tell you which parts they are, because some of it was a surprise to me. Some of it was obvious, but much of it was so taken for granted that it was a shock to find out. These hallucinations/illusions/parts of Nash's life continue through the course of the film, and the efforts by Alicia and the doctors (another excellent performance from Christopher Plummer here) to control Nash and his demons are an integral part of the film.

What sets this movie apart from other movies is something that other critics have bashed--that these unreal things...these hallucinations of Nash's, are TOO real. They say that "real hallucinations" have no substance, that you can't reach out and touch them, or be chased by them, or have arguments with them. Well, folks, I gotta tell you...that's what this kind of schizophrenia IS! After my wife's working in a neuropsychiatric hospital for several months, and my own interactions with victims of mental disease, there are definitely pathologies that fit what Nash was going through in the movie. And it depicts the problem with this schizophrenia very well--that Nash is unable to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Parts of his life he thought were real he clung to, until they were all taken away except for one. And I won't tell you what that one part is.

We see the electroshock therapy so popular in the 1950's and 60's, and it's even more horrifying than what you may have seen in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest;" there, it was shown as a punishment for non-conformity, for misbehavior. Here, Nash is trying desperately to find a cure for his illness...one that will let him continue living his life, even as it blasts his life to pieces.

We also see the difficulty of living with and loving someone with mental illness--the problems of relapses and the fear not just for your loved one, but at times for your own life or the life of your children. This is a very hard movie to watch for this fact alone; you will think of people you know in your own life, and how they and their loved ones suffer. Suffering is never easy to watch, even when it's happening to a Nobel Prize winner.

This film is very well written by Akiva Goldsman (after the book by Sylvia Nasar), and the direction by Ron Howard is superb. This includes the beautiful cinematography, as clear in the "real life" we inhabit as well as the disturbing imagery of Nash's fractured mind. The actors all give stellar performances, that break the heart and at times inspire it.

If you haven't seen this yet, you should bump it up on your list of movies to see. Although it's not "the real story" of John Nash (not in it's entirety), it does give you a glimpse. Of a beautiful mind.