Not Beautifully Mined

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2002)

Spoilers herein.
So frustrating. Once again we have an inept film about mathematics. Hard to understand: film is visceral, drawing from visually-based insights as abstractions of reality. That also describes the most exciting kind of mathematics.
The magic of the Lord of the Rings books wasn't in the story, but in the creation of an alternative world, complete with cosmology. The film lacks that inner reality and instead focuses on the story, basically one escape after another. But it is rousing good fun on that level. And so we have here. As with `Lord,' `Mind' knows where all the emotional strings are and pulls enough of them in the right order that we get successfully manipulated. But this film misses the opportunity of a lifetime to merge the images of math and film.
There are three good opportunities here, all missed:
The Nash Story Part 1: Mathematics is a matter of invention more than discovery. A clever mathematician can shape abstractions that influence all thought that follows. It is as close to God as one can get, and since most of the world is imaginary, one can argue that God will be bested at some point -- if it hasn't already occurred. There are conflicting factors involved: you need to be novel, but it must bind to some part of the world that exists. The unfamiliar made familiar; which can be done through `proofs' which is a way of presenting the new in such a way that everyone believes the world was made that way all along.
Which means you have to be extraordinarily clever in approaching a problem from an odd angle and finding the linkage. Nash was the best mind of the century in this first (challenging both Einstein and Von Neumann!). That's saying a whole lot. It means you have to have an intense focus that you maintain uninterrupted for months. The very idea exhausts. Nash had this in spades, perhaps his most remarkable quality because it was something he taught himself to do. Finally, mathematics is a verbal art, constructed in narratives with colleagues, not intrinsically in funny symbols as cartoons and movies would have it.
So think of this: you must talk with peers using a common vocabulary; but you must not in order to stay important and novel. You must shape the new in small terms, but have a global focus, holding mental orgasms for months. The tension between reaching far into the cosmos and keeping it in a conversation must have been immense. The book on which this film is based focuses on the social devolution of Nash, but the more interesting side is where his unanchored voyages took him. The film didn't mine this lode. In reality, Nash was not incompetent with soliciting sex: in fact he was very smooth and conducted multiple simultaneous bisexual affairs. That was part of the focused exercise to relate to the `world as-is.' Where he was incompetent was in mapping his visions to our lesser reality.
The Nash Story 2: Nash's madness was almost certainly caused by his `breaking' his mind by straying too far from reality to get outside this large problem he was working. The conspiracies came not from cold war silliness but something far deeper: Phil Dick science fiction and Kabbalah. Not stupid numbers but topologies (forms). Not codes but manifold patterns in higher spaces. Literally extraterrestrial voices. By the way: Alicia was as crazy, but I suppose since she had an uninteresting mind, it is not worth watching.
The most powerful scene (in the book at least) is when Nash and poet Robert Lowell were in the same `hospital.' Lowell entered Nash's room and mind daily and held forth on both for visitors. `Every word was his best friend.' Quite possibly the century's most imaginative and literate minds melded. I would have loved to have been there. (In fact I was in a thin way. I took the class Nash taught right after he was first committed -- his acolyte emulated his manner.)
The Nash Story 3 is the story about the Nobel. Uncle Alfie didn't like mathematicians (read `Jews') so refused to establish a prize in math. The `economics' was an independent prize grafted onto the Nobels as an `almost' Nobel. Most scientists are uncomfortable with economics being treated like physics because it is more obviously a constructed reality. Nash's prize prompted a debate within the Nobel community that destroyed the economics prize and is eating away at whether there is anything left but math when you skim more than superficially. It is one of the most profound institutional self-examinations ever. The film didn't mine this lode either.
All missed opportunities. Wouldn't you like to have been transported rather than merely made to cry?
What we get instead is a powerful actor and a competent director. Crowe's trick is to project his character not only into the space around him but into the space of the following scene -- largely by physical motion, usually involving the forehead. Good. But the mannerisms are not those of a mathematician in the Wiener tradition. The accent is not accurate, just an excuse to give new rhythms to the bland lines. The effect of the madness is not true, reflecting prior movies more than reality.
Howard's directing is completely without risk, art, interest. The one effect he tries is a bunch of fiddling with glass: shots through windows, often with (irrelevant) mathematical doodles. These are amateurish because the film has no inner cosmology within which one can register the metaphor. Compare this with the use of glass in `Spy Game.' MIT has a specific, abstract feel that is very easy to capture, but it somehow eluded the location scout.
See it. Enjoy it. But weep for the `lesser mortals' who fabricated it and mind the opportunities they missed.