Like all awardscoopers overrated.

Rating: 6/10 (17 March 2002)

It's got the Golden Globes and it's got the Oscar nominations so it can't be that good, right? The tendency I have is, frankly, to be very sceptical about this kind of award-winning film because the Oscars tend to be little more than a popularity contest. And if you look at a list of the big Oscar winners of the last decade(s) you'll see it hardly ever is the year's best movie getting the Best Film award (see for example American Beauty beating the likes of Magnolia and The Insider while Fight Club wasn't even nominated). Usually the awards are given to some babyboom-appealing toothless film about triumph over adversity with massive studio backing. Well, when you read A Beautiful Mind's tagline, you pretty much get the idea it's purely aimed at forking in the Golden Baldies. So, is it as good as the award ceremonies would have you believe or it as bad as I thought it would be?
The answer is: it's neither. There's a lot wrong with this, A LOT. I haven't read the book either (although the film's, uhm, 'cinematic' portrayal of Nash has brought reading it to my interest - when I get around to it, I'll read it) so there might be more wrong with it. What I do know, is that a lot of Nash's unpleasant sides have been left out of the film. We get the paranoid schizophrenia but his personal relationships (apparantly, Nash divorced his wife, only to remarry her forty years later) are sometimes skipped, as well as his bisexuality (this could have been about a bisexual genuis schizophrenic? - I would have been SO there). The point is, although the filmmakers, for some (cowardly?) reason leave out his bisexuality but do decide to insert a car chase (of all things). A Beautiful Mind is a crossover movie somewhere halfway a thriller and halfway a drama. Had they made it a mere drama by enriching the relationships in the film (the one between Nash and his wife is far too one-dimensional) I might have bought it. Had they made it a full-blown conspiracy/ schizophrenia thriller, I might have bought it. I don't buy the mixture perse. The thriller elements seem thrown in for audience entertainment alone and the human drama, under the decidly lightweight direction of Ron Howard, doesn't hit home hard enough. Plus, anyone (especially anyone who's seen one particular movie mentioned in this comment) will see the big twist coming and the movie drags toward the end. And one question continues to bug me today: did Nash, a brilliant man, really give that schmaltzy speech at the Nobel prize ceremony (if you know, please email me)?
Russell Crowe's performance is one that's there to please the Oscar audience. He's a genuis schizophrenic and Crowe does almost everything a role like Nash's requires. Every little gesture is there, the accent is near-flawless and he even acts well while in heavy layers of make-up. It is a fairly self-conscious performance, on the other hand, aimed directly at nabbing the awards. Give Denzel the Oscar. No, the real deal is delivered by Jennifer Connely, possibly Hollywood's most underrated actress. Anyone having a role as cliched as hers and anyone having to deliver those horrible lines and inject some real human emotion into it, really does deserve an Oscar. Ed Harris is good, but has an even more thankless role. Paul Bettany is great fun and injects some much-needed spirit into a film about, frankly, a bloody rude man.
The strange thing is, even though it's a straight and simple story about a brilliant man coming to terms with his environment and, far more importantly, himself, I didn't dislike it at all. I can break it down like any other Oscar-friendly far-too-feelgooder, but in the end I did care for the film's version of John Nash and his wife. I thought the scientific concepts were adequately handled (it's not trying to be a history lesson, and not a maths course either) and you can't go wrong with a cinematographer like Roger Deakins.
All in all, the movie may be a mess of historical trivia on Nash's life and some narrative trickery more suited to a more surreal film, but it is entertaining. So, please, give the awards to some really good films and accept this film for what it is: average.
Rating: 6/10