I can see why some think this flick is overrated. But...

Rating: 9/10 (27 July 2014)

I can see why some think this flick is overrated. And, in some ways perhaps it is. But...
...buried in the arguably over-slick and buttons-pushing production is a profound metaphor, and as the storyline ramps up, the message is unmistakable. It has to do with the flimsiness of the dividing line between public and private psychoses. It's an important and ever-relevant idea, and its nice that it occurred to someone that a major motion picture might be a good venue for broaching it.
I can think of two applications of this principle: Evangelical Christian environments, and--as directly addressed in this flick--"cold war" (now "terrorist") paranoia.
The Andrea Yates story, where a woman drowned her 5 kids rather than suffer the torture of "knowing" that she'd screw them up and condemn them to perdition, is NOT a story about how religion drove a woman crazy. But the truth is, in a way, worse: It's a story about the blurring of the line between public and private psychoses; about how her church milieu willingly *masked* her break with reality. Yates's insanity reflects back on a social phenomenon that doesn't have the wherewithal to deal with the very thing it for which it vaunts itself to be equipped: After all, Christianity has its origins in the story of a man who, among other things, dealt effectively with mentally ill people. But all that's just a dim ancient myth as large swaths of contemporary Christian church culture now plow along, blithely aiding and abetting mental illness.
And the story of A Beautiful Mind deals roughly the same blow to the mass psychosis of paranoia about the "other", the nemesis, the enemy, somewhere out there, lurking, waiting to pounce, elsewhere in the world.
The sad part of these systems is how a negative, aberrant minority uses these institutions, and exploits the permeability between the social/private minds, to produce societal effects that are as apparently tangible and eminently true as they are palpably life-disaffirming.
I think the above interpretation summarizes the particular limb that Opie crawled out on, at great expense, to cinematically showcase.
And, to reiterate my opening thought; yes, A Beautiful Mind is a kind of The Sound of Music with mathematics; with all the negative critique implications implied. But the work is crowned with the redeeming trait of its having shed light on perhaps the most important challenge facing decent society.