A Horrible, False Fiction About A Real, Beautiful Pain (some spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2002)

Spoiler Alert This film is a full loss of talent. Apart from Russell Crowe's good performance, the rest is pure Hollywood entertainment, sold as deep and pretentious study about madness and pain. Why doesn't Hollywood intend to risk anymore? Does someone remind that in 70's Hollywood mainstream meant "Network", "The Deer Hunter", "The Way We Were", "One Flew On the Cuckoo's Nest" etc., films where spectacular and "popular" tastes mixed beautifully with social themes and deep, sincere, honest feelings? "A Beautiful Mind" is neither honest nor sincere: it's empty, heartless, "overflowed", and above all it is unbelievable, devoid of the least "vraisemblance". In USA cinema representation of geniality has always some problems: "Good Will Hunting" had the same ridicolous faults of "A Beautiful Mind" (numbers that flow in the main character's eyes, moments of epiphany, geniality pushed in a some-fantasy atmosphere that is so contrastive in comparison with the realistic intentions of both of the films). Moreover, John Nash's hallucinations are ridiculous as well: they have a surplus of "adventurous" stories that are too far from reality. Fortunately Jennifer Connelly saves the love story, but her performance is not so extraordinary as the Academy thought (Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren were too much better than she). And, given that in John Nash's illness had such a deep influence the international political atmosphere of those years (the Cold War, the terror beholded by the American Government against the USSR etc.) and John Nash looks like a victim of social psychological terrorism nourrished in the American people by the Government, why didn't Ron Howard deepen the relationships between social environment and mental halienation (the scene where John Nash, captured by the doctors, cries "They're Russian! They're Russian! Help me! Help me!" is so awkward and superficial!!! A scene demanding for vengeance!!!)? So, what remains of this false triumph of cinema? Just a good Russell Crowe, and a false fiction about a real pain. Have a look to Nanni Moretti's "The Son's Room", rather, and you'll live a painful fictitious experience of a real pain. Cinema doesn't need cries, screams and deliria trementes to represent pain. The silences and the little movements of "The Son's Room" are quite enough to paint the schizophrenic life of people facing an unbearable, "unthinkable" pain.