Not bad

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2003)

For generations people on the street have believed that "genius is linked to insanity" and for generations psychiatrists have denied that there was any connection.
John Nash is one of the reasons the belief is popular. He suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Unlike major mood disorders (depression, mania) it tends not to come and go -- just to come and hang around. It's a devastating disease, affecting as it does the very organ that makes us what we are. And the side effects of treatment are not to be lightly dismissed.
John Nash was a very lucky guy. His search for patterns is rather typical, but his finding REAL ones, that is patterns that exist outside his own mind, is unusual. The surprising thing about his case is not that he recovered but that over the years he managed to climb out of the abyss and find a position with which he felt comfortable. Insofar as this is a success story, it's pretty unusual.
Ron Howard belongs to a group of relatively young directors -- Penny Marshall, James Brooks, Rob Reiner are some others -- that tend to take on stories that aren't excessively demanding or quirky. There may be troubles, but the endings are uplifting or heartwarming. This is that kind of story. It follows the trajectory we associate with sports biographies. Hero shows early promise, is struck down by demons during his career, overcomes demons and is apotheosized. That's pretty much the case here. Nash's winning the Nobel is kind of like Redford hitting that final game-saving home run in "The Natural."
Like Einstein, Nash was awarded the prize for work he'd done earlier in his life. Math and physics are tricky fields. If you haven't made it by the time you're thirty, you're out of the game.
But if the story isn't especially uncommon some other things about the movie are. The integration of Nash's hallucinations with his "real" experiences. This is always tough to do on screen. The fantasy figures in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" are both frighteningly unreal and obvious. But here the viewer doesn't find out until the movie is half over that some of the characters he's gotten to know are productions of Nash's mind. And they're warm and comforting too, we can can understand their appeal.
Once or twice they are a bit "overlogical" too. When his wife is trying to leave him, Nash hallucinates a little girl he'd first seen years ago, realizes that she hasn't grown any older, and that she therefore isn't real. Hallucinations don't work in such a reasonable manner. That's the kind of insight that a screenwriter might dream up.
The movie also is a bit weak in conveying the kind of deterioration in personal care that accompanies schizophrenia. Most patients aren't pretty. They are suffering and it shows in their bad teeth, their mismatched clothes, and carelessly groomed hair.
Still, within these limits, the movie is pretty good, the acting especially. It's easy to gain praise for playing the role of a deviant. You can win awards for it (cf., "Charlie," "Rain Man," et al.) But for the first time, Russell Crowe does a fine job of suggesting a genuine personality behind that dimly comprehending physical bulk. He actually comes up with a real performance as the young Nash. And it only improves as he gets older.
One of the long-term effects of antipsychotic drugs is a set of twitchy movements called tardive dyskinesia. A good example of this is given after his return to Princeton, when he waddles along the campus and some kids mimic him from behind and laugh. (Ron Howard had the good taste not to turn incidents like this into moments of heartbreaking, tearjerking, hankywetting, blubbering, lachrymos pathos. Some directors would have done exactly that.)
There is also the case of Jennifer Connoly. (Wow.) She's hardly recognizable as the innocent, open-lipped waif that she was in, say, "Hot Spot." She's a full-blown woman now, her face filled out and her jaw somewhat hardened, although she has the same girlish voice. Like Brooke Shields she has changed over the years from an adolescent of Kewpie-doll beauty whom any normal man would want to squeeze and bite into a more mature but still strikingly beautiful creature. It's hard to tell whether she is much of an actress. She hasn't had any truly challenging roles. Her movements are languid. They flow like silk. That could be a limitation.
Well, see this movie. You may think you've had it bad, but Nash had it worse. For most of us, alas, there is not much of a Prize at the end.