At The Movies

Partly Truth, Partly Fiction

A Beautiful Mind (****)

Sasha Stone
Mirror film critic

   Ron Howard has been flirting with greatness since he began directing films, starting all the way back in the 1980s with “Splash.” His more serious films like “Apollo 13,” “Ransom” and “Far and Away” are decent enough, with moments of greatness, but never has he been so on his game as he is with his most recent film, “A Beautiful Mind.”
   Perhaps it is the tight collaboration with his famously perfectionist star, Russell Crowe, who plays John Nash — a brilliant mathematician who, after decades of battling schizophrenia, goes on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Or perhaps Ron Howard has finally come into his own, has better learned how to trust his instincts — which manifests in his ability to hold back from the audience what they may discover themselves.
   “A Beautiful Mind” does not let up from the moment we first meet Nash -- a shy and awkward young man anxious to prove his genius to the world -- to its bitter end, where Nash, turned ghostly by his battle with schizophrenia, struggles to stay connected to the world of mathematics, haunting the halls of Princeton, mocked by students for his delusional episodes.
   The majority of the film is concerned with Nash’s mental illness — his reality. What at first seems like a cheap cinematic ploy ends up being a one-way ticket down a dark and difficult road into the horrible and the miserable of Nash’s mind, and a look at how, in America in the 1950s, it was easier to overlook eccentricities in hopes of discovering the next Oppenheimer or Einstein than it was to admit to a growing illness.
   There’s a point in Nash’s life where he is at a crossroads: he’s about to be institutionalized (after exhibiting dangerous behavior) and he decides to confront his own delusions, to accept that they exist, even if they aren’t real. This film doesn’t say Nash got sick, then he got better. It says, he got sick, then he learned to live with it.
   What holds Nash together is his relationship with his wife, Alicia, played with exquisite reserve by Jennifer Connelly. Nash’s determination to hold on to what Alicia brings to his life (normalcy) is such that he’s willing to take debilitating medication, or, at her urging, to swallow his pride and ask if he can “hang around” Princeton because it might help him recover. Connelly’s Alicia, even the mere appearance of her — the great beauty that she is — is the breath of life that offers Nash’s nightmare a respite. Where the film falters is in not giving us enough of her.
   Nonetheless, Howard knew that the key to this movie was to stay on Crowe’s portrayal of Nash. His camera is relentless in its desire to unfurl its main character. He doesn’t let up, to the point where it feels like he’s showing more than we can bear. But he can see, as we can see, that Russell Crowe is to acting what Nash was to mathematics — he studies the specifics then expresses the whole. Crowe’s performance starts with mannerisms that he never wavers from — Nash’s overbite, hand movements and speech patterns — but then he acts the whole thing with his eyes. It is a miracle to watch, easily the best of Crowe’s already impressive career.
   “A Beautiful Mind” is not the tale of John Nash’s sexuality, it is not even a dramatic retelling of his life story — it is nearly fiction, taking the main points of Nash’s life, but altering them enough to get across the idea that there is a delicate boundary in the human mind between genius and madness.
   Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman seemed more concerned with broad strokes, the universal experience of mental illness, than whether or not Nash was a bisexual or gay. Still, Crowe inserted some of this conflict in his performance, even if it isn’t in the writing — it is also in Howard’s direction, how he lingers on the smiling faces of seductive men, how he cast almost every bit part with pretty-looking actors as if to say: this is how Nash saw the world. But that is not the ultimate subject, nor the point, of the film.
   Of course, most critics have taken the film to task for not being “historically accurate” about Nash’s life, much the same way they took apart “Shine.” But this is, in my mind, backwards thinking that doesn’t get the big picture. Take, for example, the biopic “Pollock.” Director Ed Harris wanted to stay “true” to who Jackson Pollock was – the end result was a depressing actors’ showcase, and nothing more. People interested in the “truth” (give or take) of Nash’s life can tune in to one of the handful of documentaries and TV biographies that have recently surfaced.
   Filmmakers are artists too. We want insight and interpretation from them. We want them to take us places. Howard has suddenly become an artist here, no longer just an entertainer.
   Even still, if you choose to seek out truth in a film, you will get the truth about mental illness here, especially the kind that walks hand-in-hand with “genius.” This exceptional film doesn’t prepackage schizophrenia to make it more palatable, but it helps us see things from a mentally ill person’s point of view — and out of that, we may come to compassion and understanding more easily.