Tolerate the first half for a rewarding second half

Rating: Null/10 (12 January 2002)

I saw 'Beautiful Mind' because 'Vanilla Ice' was sold out. I had heard a great deal about this movie, and Russel Crowe's performance. So expectations were high. I had some idea about the story, and I know how hollywood deals with the real life stories of great/extraordinary personalities. And thats why I didn't like the first half of the film. It was so conventional, and Russel's character has been built up in such a stereotypical way. He's the typical absent minded, aloof but highly intelligent and witty mathematician, surrounded by equally talented but more worldy friends and foes. He lives in own world, and his fascination is breaking codes, playing with numbers. He jots down complex equations on the walls, on the window panes, anyplace you can think of. In one of the scenes he's show trying the formulate the pattern of pigeons' movement in the park! Balooni!! There's only so much I could take about his eccentricity. I mean c'mon, mathematicians and scientists normal people like you and me. I hate it when they try to create a larger than life picture of someone just to establish the story line. Instead they can show his actual contribution to the world of mathematics in general and economic in particular. But they assume that the person sitting in the audience lacks the intelligence to understand the technical stuff, so lets just simplify it for them by showing them wierd equation on the board and the walls and the window panes.
Anyway, so thats the first half of the film. Hollywoodization of the life and works of John Nash the mathematician. But all this changes in the second half when you realize that its not that this film is not just about the life of a great mathematician, but there's something more mysterious going one. I got hooked up into the movie only when it was revealed that Russel's character is a schizophrenic, and the movie gets better and better from this point. If only the story could have been told in a better way, like keeping the audience guessing from the first scene whether whatever John is going through is real or just his imagination, this could have been a much more engrossing film. This film could have been turned into a complex visual saga by going into Russel's imaginary world and the real world. Towards the end of the movie there are a few samplers of it, but not enough.
Russels Crowe's performance keeps improving throughout the course of the movie. In the beginning his actions look animated. At times he's confident, and at others he acts like a retarded fellow. Everybody else did a ok job, nothing noteworthy. Ed Harris's character hardly generates any impact. Ron Howard I believe makes movie which try to cross over from purely commercial arena to meaningful domain. Its very difficult to keep a balance, and thats why this movie lacks the punch.