Beautiful Title, Bad Film

Rating: Null/10 (28 August 2002)

This purported biographical film of John Nash's life is so patently false that the names of all the characters should have been changed before it's release. Nash had two wives and two sons and was a bisexual who had numerous affairs with both men and women. Virtually none of this is in the plot. But even if we ignore the inaccuracies how does A Beautiful Mind hold up as a film? Not very well I am afraid. According to Ron Howard's version John Nash appears out of nowhere on a college campus in 1947. After one triumphant moment he spends the next few years as somewhat of a social outcast until a beautiful student takes an interest in the shy and remote young man, who, according to the film, would have most likely remained single and a virgin were it not for this interest. Is this a true picture of schizophrenia? I doubt it. Is this a biography of John Nash? It certainly is not. Is this even entertaining? Hardly. The film is a steady downward spiral of the main character's mental illness with very few enlightening or uplifting moments to leaven the material until the bizarre and totally out of character Rocky-like ending.
I was not even impressed with the performances. Russell Crowe, who, in The Insider, arguably gave the best performance by an actor in the last decade, is all tics and mannerisms. One hopes that in his next film he chooses better material and a better writer. Jennifer Connelly is very good, but it is a nothing role, all reaction. Roger Deakin's cinematography, however, is, as always, superb. Of the writing one can only ask, did this man even read the book that this film is supposed to be based on? It is as if the writer took the idea of John Nash and wrote a script about that.

I did like two scenes. Howard's visualization of Nash's games' theory using a blonde woman and her friends was excellent and actually gives one the idea that Howard could have made a much better film about Nash had he been given an actual script. And the scene where Nash and Alicia look at the stars and he draws pictures in the sky was touchingly romantic.

That this film won the Academy Award best picture of the year over such obviously superior films as Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, and Lord of the Rings should come as no surprise. Apollo 13, Ron Howard's best film and the one for which he should have taken the Oscar, lost to the stunningly mediocre Braveheart and Mel Gibson, the only director in history to win not for his talent (Gibson has little directoral talent) but for his looks.