A fine movie; a "detailed" book

Rating: 8/10 (9 February 2002)

Enjoyed reading many other reviewer's comments, especially those who'd experienced schizophrenia themselves or who'd worked as psychiatrists and the like. I've had some acquaintance on a personal level with friends and family who've experienced mental illness -- both bi-polar illness (usually called mania or manic-depressive illness) and schizophrenia. After first seeing the movie and then reading Sylvia Nasar's book, I have very mixed emotions about both. The main "true" thing which comes through in either version -- is that schizophrenics do sometimes recover, or experience long periods of "remission" as the book describes it. Central to this, many times, is the support of family and recognition of professional colleagues. In Nash's case, many many colleagues were exceptionally tolerant and caring -- something more underscored in the book. The movie makes Nash's wife the main hero, plain and simple, in his recovery. The books paints a much more varied and full-bodied story of life with his wife, his mistress, his sons (one by his wife, one by his mistress) -- and of his homosexual liaisons which were also key to his life-long journey towards becoming nicer or more human and humane. The book contains a wealth of detail -- much of it about Nash's contemporaries rather than about his own life; I'd say you get about one-third Nash, two-thirds Nash's acquaintances and company. It's impossible to write a biography, of course, without giving background details. But Nasar had great difficulty making both Nash's personality and his so-called "Beautiful Mind" comprehensible or appealing. A lot of what he did and thought was more ugly than beautiful. A different title would have helped greatly, I think. Anyway, Nasar's way of coping with writing about Nash himself was to take refuge in describing those around him who were less successful but easier to describe, or who were more extreme in personality or who achieved greater acclaim before he did. She wants to show that he, to some extent, ranks with the greatest thinkers of any time -- people like Nicola Tesla, Einstein, Pascal. This may be true, and when she showed how Nash sought to approach the really knotty problems, especially those considered important by many people -- it works. But Nasar is terrible at explaining math in its particulars or in general. She does little better with the relationship between math and applied-math fields which so often involved Nash directly or ended up being important to the application of what he'd originated as so-called pure mathematics. I was ready to forgive the movie for this -- and while it gives only a suggestion of the math involved, at least it does this well, even exceptionally -- but not the book. There are close to one-hundred pages of notes at the end of Nasar's books -- and seeking those sources is the only hope for those intrigued by Nash's accomplishments or areas of research. The best "story" of the book, the only part well-narrated, comes near the end, and involves the Noble Prize and the fight between the Noble committee members over choosing Nash. It's a great story. In the book, after it becomes clear Nash has shown signs of recovering from schizophrenia, a slow and steady progression over ten or twenty years -- Nasar raises the question of whether Nash might have been misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. No one recovers from schizophrenia, especially without drugs -- that's what people used to think, many still do -- and both book and movie mention this belief. Manic-depression, however, is known to often be well-controlled with medications. I've had direct contact with manic-depressives and relatives of them, much more so than with schizophrenics -- to me there's no question that Nash was not a manic-depressive. On the other hand, from all indications, Nash was someone who suffered, at times severely, from schizophrenia, with paranoid delusions. The paranoid element of his illness may be to some degree realistically and imaginatively treated in the movie. Where the movie strays very far from the truth, in a sort of Disney way, is in the creation of his imaginary college roommate and then later with the roommate's cute little daughter who never ages. Nash never had any hallucinations or delusions of that sort; he imagined aliens were communicating with him, and felt he'd gained knowledge which would help world leaders, presidents and premiers, and even sought to communicate with the Pope. He did clip headlines from newspapers and magazines, as the movie depicts -- in connection with this paranoid-delusional obsession. The character of the roommate is well-acted, however; I personally felt it was an excellent performance. But, be that as it may, especially with the addition of the roommate's daughter, it makes for the movie's major failing. What results is a cuddly and almost kindergarten-level metaphor or simplification as part of the portrait of both the disease and of Nash's experience of it. When I watched the film, despite never having personally known or witnessed someone with schizophrenia -- I had a feeling schizophrenics and their families would find those sequences of the film offensive or simply ridiculously untrue to life. Reading other reviewers' comments, that hunch seems well justified. Nonetheless, granting that the movie departs in some large ways from the real events of Nash's life, and blunders badly with the phantom roommate element -- it's still a great film. Great movies and great books often do have blunders, sometimes serious ones, or weak sections. In this case, I think the movie especially can be forgiven its faults and distortions because of the challenge of portraying such difficult subjects. By that I mean not only Nash himself, as a personality, but more broadly the topics of advanced mathematics and schizophrenia. Secondly, it does have its heart in the right place -- the patient and loving care of family and friends can play a major role in helping mentally-ill people (not to exclude the role of doctors and medical treatments). Finally, I think it's an extraordinary performance by Russell Crowe. He's better in "The Insider" -- but from the all-too-little of what Nash was really like in speech and in personal mannerisms which does at times come through in Nasar's book -- Crowe's portrayal has elements of genius. Certainly the scriptwriter deserves recognition, here, too -- since the book provides mainly the film's title and little in the way of dialog or coherent narrative thrust. Some reviewers have complained that Crowe is too much of a muscle-man to portray such an intellectual. But Nash was strong; he lifted weights -- he was physically imposing, especially since he was quite tall as well. So, if you want to complain on behalf of tall-people that it was unfair to select Crowe to play Nash -- OK. But give the idea that smarts and brawn never go together a rest. Nash was not only tall and strong, but as photos and text in Nasar's biography demonstrate -- quite handsome. He had movie-star good looks when he was young and before his illness led to a decline in his dress and appearance.