Veritable Fallacies

Rating: 9/10 (19 June 2014)

John Forbes Nash Jr. (Russell Crowe), a brilliant young mathematician and recipient of the prestigious Carnegie Scholarship at Princeton, finds himself at a loss while searching for a truly original idea to be published. With the unwitting help of his roommate Charles, several classmates, and a stranger at the pub, he stumbles onto a new theory of governing dynamics that ultimately earns him a place in history. He soon goes to work for Wheeler Defense Labs where he becomes a code breaker for the U.S. Government as well as a professor. Through his work, John meets his wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), and U.S. Department of Defense agent William Parcher (Ed Harris), who both prove to be very influential in many different ways. As he tries to find his way on a path to recognition, he finds himself struggling with a much stronger force than intelligence . . . schizophrenia.
John Nash spent most of his life in a lonely state of superiority. His quest for a truly original idea and his overwhelming feeling of failure when he can't seem to find it show that he valued his intellect above all else. When he finds that he can no longer trust his own mind, the mind that served as his only friend for a great portion of his life, we as an audience become as confused and devastated as he was. Director Ron Howard brings the viewers into his world, into his state of confusion, to shed light onto the lesson he learned. Yes, John Nash was exceptionally intelligent, but he was also fragile in a very humbling way. Because of this, he came to hold humanity and love in a very dear little place in his once cold, blindly driven heart.
I appreciate and almost envy that heart-breaking learning process. I feel myself falling, growing, smashing, and squishing my way through a distantly related struggle towards contentment. I can connect with his desire for greatness, his ultimate descent back down to earth, and the feeling of peace that followed. This film has shown me that we will never live up to our own expectations, but we can achieve a much more remarkable form of greatness by accepting our fallibility.