Make no mistake, this is no easy ride. Regardless of the Chinese whispers doing the rounds about OSCARS etc, “A Beautiful Mind” is a disconcerting depiction of the real life story of John Nash: Nobel Prize-winning genius Mathematician with, apparently, the World at his feet, who just happens to be a paranoid schizophrenic.
Brilliantly portrayed by Russell Crowe throughout, Nash’ story begins with his college years at Princeton University, New Jersey and – while he quickly gains a reputation as an obsessive outsider driven by a quest for the “original” economic idea (with more than a hint of VIZ’s “Mr.Logic” about him) – his future seems assured when he embarks on a highly-paid, highly-respected teaching job at Wheeler Labs and (amazingly) falls for and marries the beautiful Alicia (Connolly).
Unfortunately, it’s around this time that the whole thing unravels. Having apparently been recruited into the Security Services as a Top Secret code breaker (with an arm implant, to boot) by the ubiquitous CIA spook Parcher (Harris – as convincing as ever) he slides into an underworld of Cold War espionage, dead letter drops and paranoia a go-go.
Except he doesn’t really. Because it turns out that Parcher is really just a figment of Nash’s ultra-fertile imagination (not to mention his recurring hallucinations of his supposed Princeton room-mate Charles Herman and his young niece) and instead of delivering what he believes to be secret information to a CIA safehouse, Nash has actually been visiting an old, abandoned mansion to drop his letters. The stress and eventual breakdown lead Nash to hospitalisation and a horrific course of ECT in a genuinely shocking “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”-style scenario. Later, he gradually embarks on a course of rehabilitation – with the help of the incredibly long-suffering Alicia – which finally sees him as a respected Professor back at Princeton and ultimately a Nobel Prize recipient for his earlier theory.
Actually, “A Beautiful Mind” is an entirely unsettling experience altogether and should go some way in helping us to understand the utterly bewildering and (beyond) harrowing events that people with schizophrenia are faced with on a daily basis – not to mention what their carers (like Alicia) must also endure in their lives. Indeed, scenes like the one where the institutionalised Nash tears his arm to shreds in a desperate search for the supposed CIA “implant” are disturbing in the extreme and bear precious little relation to most standard Hollywood procedures.
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I say most because Nash’s imagined Cold War/ code breaking experiences do get a bit “X-FILES” at times, and it’s hard to imagine Alicia wouldn’t have noticed his resumed “secret” activities in the shed in the woods by their house for so long. Nonetheless, such is the nature of “A Beautiful Mind” that fact and fiction do overlap precariously and – rather like you look at crows on a wire with a different eye after seeing Hitchcock’s “THE BIRDS” – you’ll find yourself taking more notice than usual of cars in the rear view mirror on the way home.
Nash’s steely resolve to reason his way out of his terrible affliction and Alicia’s determination to remain steadfast against atrocious odds are both exceptionally moving and “A Beautiful Mind” is ultimately a successful and compelling movie that ably demonstrates just how little we really understand about the complexities of the human condition.
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