A Beautiful Mind Will Not Be A Waste (of your money).

I don’t write movie reviews often so when I do there is a reason. The reason for this review is, that in my opinion, this is a must see movie. I thought this before A Beautiful Mind won 4 Golden Globes last night. We went to see the movie yesterday afternoon with friends after hearing that it was wonderful.

When the movie was over I said “Russell Crowe will win an Oscar for that performance” and I do believe he will. I am a novice at reviewing movies so bear with me. It seems from my experience as a movie watcher that a great actor is one who can play a part that is not part of the actor's personality or psyche. Two others who quickly come to mind are Al Pacino in Scent of A Woman who plays a man who is blind and Dustin Hoffman, of course, plays The Rainman. Now we can add Crowe to the list as John Nash, the brilliant but schizophrenic math genius whose theory of equilibrium won him a Nobel Prize in 1994. John Nash, so intrigued my husband, that he plans to do some Internet surfing today to read more about Nash. In spite of my husband’s math/accounting background, he is not an economist and was not aware of Nash’s contributions to the world.

The movie is based on the 1998 bestseller by Sylvia Nasar.

The actors:

~Russell Crowe, born in New Zealand plays John Nash from the time he was a graduate student at Princeton University until 1994. He was “aged” wonderfully by the makeup artists. You know Crowe from Proof of Life, Gladiator, L.A. Confidential and a whole host of other movies as well as his well-publicized relationship with Meg Ryan. He won a Golden Globe for best actor.

~Jennifer Connelly, born in New York is 31 years old and attended Yale and Stanford. I was not familiar with her work but you may know her from the TV series The Street. The brains that got her into Yale and Stanford helped her play Alicia Nash, John’s student and then wife, brilliantly. She is beautiful as well as talented and her compassion for her husband came through on the screen. The fact she stayed with him in spite of his not knowing whether he would hurt her, in retrospect makes her a hero. At the time, I think we all wanted her to take their baby and leave John. She won a Golden Globe for best supporting actress.

~Other actors in A Beautiful Mind:

Christopher Plummer does a wonderful job playing Dr. Rosen, Nash’s psychiatrist who has a tough job teaching, medicating and using shock treatment to help Nash decipher what and who is real and not.

Ed Harris, Judd Hirsh, Adam Goldberg as well as other actors who did fabulous jobs but with whom I am not familiar include Anthony Rapp and Jonathan Lucas.

The movie was directed by Ron Howard who probably also would have won a Golden Globe if Robert Altman had not won it for Gosford Park.

Akiva Goldsman won a Golden Globe for best screenplay.

My thoughts:

A Beautiful Mind took me, as it did Nash, from reality to delusional thinking and hallucinations without my even knowing it was happening! I rarely see a movie more than once, but this is one I would see again. Now that I know what is real and what isn’t, I would like to go back and see it from that perspective. I won’t tell you what is real and what is not because, in my opinion, it will ruin it for you. I enjoyed the movie because all I knew was that it was based on a real life person with schizophrenia.

This movie is long – 135 minutes to be exact – and at one point I found myself nodding off. If I saw it again, I wouldn’t. I think that happened because I was having a difficult time deciphering reality from non-reality and my brain got tired. Knowing how tired my brain got allowed me, though, to imagine, just a tiny bit, what life for John Nash must be like.

There are a couple of “flaws” in the movie – at least from my novice perspective.

1. The timeline – there are a couple of times that Nash’s son is at an age that if you do the math is off a bit. For example, when Nash gets the Nobel Prize, his son should have been older than he looked.

2. The friend I went with sold Tupperware for years. They showed Tupperware before it had been “invented.”

3. Crowe’s accent: There were times during the movie that I thought he was changing accents on purpose – because of his illness- but, I talked with my husband about it and he concurs that this was just some bad acting on Crowe’s part, the bad part I can overlook, if in fact, it wasn’t done on purpose. Being from New Zealand Crowe has an accent, which he starts the movie off with. During the movie he sounds like he is from different parts of the United States several times.

4. I will also read up on Nash because his story fascinates me. I would have liked some glimpse into his childhood.

This movie is rated PG-13.

In conclusion:

I can’t recommend A Beautiful Mind highly enough. It isn't "just" about mental illness; it is a movie about love, courage, the will to keep going and the spirit to overcome. In spite of the fact it made my friend and me cry at the end, it also choked up both our husbands. This is not a “chick flick.” This is a wonderfully made movie with fabulous acting about a most amazing man. Go see it!