Mathematics, mental illness and the Cold War.

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2011)

As a director Ron Howard likes making character pieces set to a period backgrounds. He did that with Apollo 13, Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon, but it was A Beautiful Mind that won him the Oscar. Weirdly, I think A Beautiful Mind is a lesser film to his other films.
A Beautiful Mind is a bio-pic about John Nash (Russell Crowe), a Mathematical genius who created the revolutionary idea of Game Theory. Starting with his life as a PHD student at Princeton University Nash where he starts to see the world in a certain light. After impressing his professors Nash get to work at MIT and advices the Pentagon on code breaking. He is recruited by William Parcher (Ed Harris), an intelligence agent for the CIA. Parcher tells Nash of a plot by the Soviet to blow up a nuclear bomb on US soil and communicate with their sleepers through codes in magazines. Nash forms a relationship with a beautiful woman, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), but as he becomes more paranoid, Nash view of reality is altered.
A Beautiful Mind is a slow burning type of film, where the story and the character development is built over time. It is a serious drama that was designed as an actors film. And the actor was really good and that is what you would except from this cast. Crowe was really good and it was believed he lost the Oscar because of his outer acting activities. I really like Jennifer Connelly as an actress and she has shown talent in her roles: the highlight of her performance was when her relationship with Nash starts to break down and flex her acting muscles. Paul Bettany is another actor I really like and his role was to add a little comic relief to the film. And Ed Harris was able to give a more sinister performance, a little like his role in The Truman Show. He is also a little like the spies in The Good Shepherd, even dressing the same.
A Beautiful Mind is a film about mental issues, a subject that is hard to be put onto screen because it is an internal issue and people experience it differently. But Howard does his best to visualise it, with Nash hallucinating events, seeing numbers and patterns and codes jump out from the pages. It was when the film truly comes to life when it is relieved that Nash is delusional and how his mind made up its own form of reality.
But reading Nash's real story there was some even more strange behaviour. One example was because of his paranoid that he tried to flee America and renounce his American citizenship. Or when he was delusional he when on anti-Semitic rants blaming Jews for World Communism. It is interesting how his delusional were based on Cold War fears and the whole idea of the Red Scare that was common for the period. It was a great way for the right wing to try and keep people in control and force through their agenda: they still do it today. Plus the real Robert Nash had a number of affairs and had a child out of wedlock.
Overall, A Beautiful Mind is a good film, but it is typical Oscar bait. 7.5/10.