The safe-bet version of a biopic

Rating: Null/10 (22 March 2018)

John Nash's story is without a doubt interesting and certainly not easy to translate into a movie format. But that cannot be an excuse. We get a movie that is a bit of a heartbreaking drama, a bit of a spy action flick and a bit of a biographical picture (with many fictionalized parts). But it does nothing really exceptionally well. What it does well is to dumb everything down for a broad audience and to make it as little offending as possible.
*SPOILERS*
First, it would have been nice to see what makes John Nash actually a genius. We see him being awkward and weird, highly intelligent and constantly scribbling math on some surfaces. To the average movie audience it's clear: This man must be some sort of genius! Come on, don't treat your audience like that, Ron Howard! If you really must dumb it down, include maybe at least a reference to why he actually won the Nobel price and why his work was important. Well, at least we got the scene with the women in the bar.
Secondly, many details of Nash's life are just wrong or fictionalized, which does not have to be a bad thing per se. For example, in "Amadeus" the writer's allowed themselves a lot of freedom with Mozart's life in order to tell a greater, romanticised story about art. But here a story that was not always very "clean" in reality is told in a fashion for maximum Oscars chances. It wants to be a story full of heart (and even sacrifices intelligence for that), but if you take a closer look, it is a calculated movie. Anything that could be offensive is left out. Just google Nash's real biography if you don't believe me.
And this sugarcoating includes the depiction of schizophrenia. I don't have much insight into this mental illness but I'm sure it doesn't work in the way the movie shows us. Nash sees the same three imaginary people over and over again until we as an audience learn they are not real. Or are they? Initially, this state of confusion gave the movie interesting touch of mystery, that I actually enjoyed. I had no idea if this movie would stick to the sort-of-biopic-format or turn into an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
It's really hard to find anything else to compliment. The cinematography looks kind of flat? And I can't even say I'm a fan of Connelly's slightly expressionless acting. Ironically, she won an Oscar instead of Crowe, who actually was quite convincing.