Did John Nash make that speech at the Nobel Prize award ceremony?

Rating: 3/10 (19 March 2002)

To answer to the question John Nash did not give the speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony that is in the film A BEAUTIFUL MIND; the only Nobel Prize winner that gives a speech is the Peace Prize winner (or the Literature winner -- there's only one that is allowed to speak, and I can't remember which -- I'm not losing my mind, just my memory). Nash gave no speech at all; he held a press conference. The speech is a fabrication of the screenwriter.
Nash won the Nobel MEMORIAL Prize in Economics, which is not a true Nobel Prize, by the way. It is not funded by the Nobel will (which is the reason the guy vetting Nash for the prize explains that money has to be raised for it). I read the book when it first came out and barely remember it (though I remember it being a good read -- that darn memory again), but I believe it had covered the extensive politicking behind the prize which was fascinating in itself.
I thought the film was horrible. One leaves the theater not knowing anything about John Nash (the real John Nash), mental illness, or life itself. Love did not cure John Nash -- the best explanation for the spontaneous remission of his schizophrenia is hormonal changes that began when he reached his 50s. Love does not cure schizophrenia, folks, outside of a Hollywood suds fest.
What is so egregious about leaving out Nash's bisexuality is that the "Red Scare" and purges in the U.S. in the late 1940s/1950s targeted homosexuals as security risks. (This explains why Nash in real life was fired from the Rand Corp. -- the "think tank" so intertwined with the Vietnam War -- after allegedly making a pass at another man.) Homosexuals were considered "mentally ill" officially by the American Psychiatric Assn. until the early 1970s. They were, and continue to be considered, security risks by the military-industrial establishment.
The film is nearly a constant lie from beginning to end. One mourns for the great film that could have resulted from such material put in the hands of a great director with a taste for the duality/perversity of life as truly lived, say Atom Egoyan. Ron "Opie" Howard's direction is abysmal. This is a child actor morphed into big budget Hollywood director that has no point-of-view/take on life other than the box office. Schmaltz equals box office, so that's what we get. "That's entertainment!" I don't believe Opie knows anything about what it's like to attend a university such as Princeton, let alone what it is like to be afflicted by genius-cum-schizophrenia or to live life in the real world. It is a movie with a profound deficit in wisdom.
I found the performances to be incredibly over-hyped; Jennifer Connelly is fine, but she does not give a performance of award-winning caliber unless the award is such hype-driven "Let's honor the latest B-movie bimbo morphed serious actress" awards as as the Oscar. I was also not disappointed to see her breasts, or her in revealing outfits. (It's the 1950s -- why isn't she in a girdle or some other foundation garments? There is not attention to detail in this film; it's all softened to evoke the year 2001 through a nostalgic filter. "The Man Who Wasn't There," in contrast, masterfully evokes the feel of the '50s. I could remember the feel starched shirts, tiny sports jackets, clasp-on ties and faux-fedoras my brother and I wore to church in the early 1960s while watching "Man." "Beautiful Mind," in contrast, evokes the 1990s, what with portable nukes, the word "meds," the digital readout implant, etc. Soft focus filmmaking, geared towards not challenging the audience even minutely.) I mention Connelly's assets as after watching her over many years, including her wonderful turn in "Waking the Dead," one comes to expect seeing her breasts, or oogling her in something sexy. You're disappointed when it doesn't come off.
The one-note performance of Russell Crowe makes me doubt my earlier assessment of him as a very talented actor. There is no development at all in his characterization of John Nash, and while I would like to blame the director, I think back on his performances in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and THE INSIDER (the latter of which I liked enormously) and see his Nash is just a variation of his "wounded" shtick. It was monotonous, to watch Nash as a loon from beginning to end. None of Crowe's characterizations, on second thought, show any development at all.
While I will concede with Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" that I was watching an actor of some talent (though not greatly gifted), but I was watching an actor "acting" rather than an actor as the character (as Tom Wilkinson, who gave the most outstanding performance in English-language film this year, does in "In The Bedroom" -- you forget you're watching an actor acting and are watching the character himself). There is no fluidity at all in Crowe's characterization, nothing of the seamlessness of when a great actor becomes the character her plays. we're watching a cobbled-together performance, something more akin to elocution, "gestures" that will convey to the ordinary mass "My -- aren't I watching 'great acting.'" Crowe could have used semaphores (as opposed to the lazy or bored actor "phoning in" his performance; I supposed the audience gives extra credit for extra effort in really getting out there and "acting"). Crowe gives us a herky-jerky nut-case who becomes almost laughable two-thirds into the film. While watching the film, I began to think that Tom Hanks would have done a much better job with the character.
I have had a long-standing argument with my girlfriend over the merits of Tom Hanks as an actor -- I'm not a fan of his, she is -- but watching Crowe's "good" bad acting made me appreciate that Hanks is indeed a truly good actor. A hallmark of an outstanding performance is when you cannot imagine another actor in the role -- I can not only imagine other actors in the role of John Nash, but other actors giving a far better, far more believable performance than the over-hyped Russell Crowe. Apart from Hanks, Gary Oldman would have been terrific in this role. There's such a scent of ham in Crowe's characterization, all's I can think is -- if you're going to go that route, why not with the greatest slice of ham in the world -- Mr. Oldman? Gary never made it to star status and then began weighing roles by the size of his pay-cheque, but he is at heart a terrific actor, albeit a really full-bore, over-the-top one, but if that's the way the director wanted it played -- as an out and out looney tune -- why not go with a great actor that can give you a fluid performance that is not a bunch of cobbled together tics (and whose "West Virginia" accent wanes more than Nash's schizophrenia as portrayed in the film).
This film is terrible -- it makes a caricature of a genius, a caricature of someone who is mentally ill. Fifty years from now, if there still is a good ol' planet Earth, people will look back and see Crowe's unenlightened performance (as orchestrated by Opie) to be the equivalent of Step-in-Fetchit.