Never has the line between genius and madness seemed thinner than it does in A Beautiful Mind.
This Oscar-winning 2001 movie, inspired by the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., is the story of a Nobel Prize-winning theorist and a paranoid schizophrenic who happen to be the same person.
Directed by Ron Howard, the film dances along that delicate line, beginning with Nash’s arrival, as a dazzling mathematics student, at Princeton University in 1947. It ends, nearly a half-century later, with Nash winning the big prize.
What we see on the screen is sometimes real and sometimes a function of Nash’s mental illness.
At its best, the film is a showcase for Russell Crowe, who grabs the role of Nash and plays it for all he’s worth.
Not only does he morph convincingly from college boy to senior citizen, he charts Nash’s descent into dementia and attempt to struggle back.
Nash arrives at the university fresh from West Virginia, rough around the edges. Crowe has fun with the young man’s social awkwardness and with his character’s near-indifference to his classmates’ reactions to it.
“I’m here to work,” he announces. Nash’s risky method is to skip class whenever possible, all the while searching for “a truly original idea” with which to “distinguish” himself.
We follow his saga as he graduates, begins teaching, gets married and struggles with his demons.
All the while, his brilliant but unstable mind just gets sicker.
Director Howard doesn’t really have the command of style to create a multilayered movie like this one, a movie that drifts in and out of delusion along with its hero.
But Howard gives Crowe the space he needs to build a memorable character. And he surrounds his star with supporting players who truly do lend support, such as Ed Harris as a mysterious figure.
Other than Crowe, the most memorable performer in A Beautiful Mind is the beautiful Jennifer Connelly.
Howard positions, dresses and lights Connelly as if she were a glamorous star of the ’40s. In this film, she plays Nash’s ever-loyal wife.
Akiva Goldsman’s script is essentially a series of vignettes. And Howard’s ease with the actors keeps most of these pieces involving.
One of the best concerns a get-together at a bar in which Nash and his male classmates notice an attractive woman across the room.
It’s Nash’s observation of the other guys’ behaviors that gives him the idea for a bold new mathematical theory.
The scene is presented so cleverly that the sophisticated theory should be clear enough to you even if you can’t balance your checkbook.
And speaking of calculations, one way to think of A Beautiful Mind is as an equation:
One great performance plus several very good ones plus one serviceable script minus one uncertain style equals one entertaining, if flawed, motion picture.
Go ahead: You do the math.
