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A Beautiful Mind: much ado about…what?

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Before writing this, I looked over the films that Ron Howard was involved with, and the ones I knew were rather formulaic.  This confirmed much of what I felt while watching A Beautiful Mind: it was very formulaic.

It also avoided the core question, which was the cause of John Nash's mental illness.  As someone who has had up close and personal involvement with mental illness, it is very much not a random thing.  I know that there are "genetic links" to it, but that is a fancy way of saying "crazy parents beget crazy kids."

It comes down to the old nature/nurture debate, but I don't think there's any argument at this point that people raised in an abusive household often exhibit abusive behavior.

And that's the gaping void at the heart of the film.  It starts in the middle (a common Ron Howard trait), and so we have no idea what happened to John Nash before he got to Princeton.  This is kind of important, because (as we subsequently learn) he almost immediately has hallucinations.

Did these happen before Princeton?  Did they help inspire him to get there?  None of this is known.  Instead, we have the Mark IA story of a person who craves greatness, achieves it, encounters and obstacle, stumbles, but eventually overcomes it to great acclaim.  The end.

I get that film time is finite, and I would rather have seen a few minutes of flashbacks to his childhood rather than extended car chases and shootouts that didn't actually happen.  By that I mean: you can show his descent into paranoia without flashy action sequences.

Another aspect that is missing is his faith.  Was Nash religious?  I know Hollywood has a consistent allergy to the topic, preferring to simply erase it from biographies.  Everything has a secular, materialist explanation.  Or it's some sort of vague spirituality, usually non-Christian.  (Christians are mean and intolerant because they don't like grooming.)

Anyway, I found it moved rather slow, the plot twists felt contrived and the big reveals weren't.  It speaks volumes that a paint-by-numbers prestige picture got covered with awards, but that's how things are in the present age.

 

  1. CN Avatar
    CN

    The Sylvia Nassar book gives a more complete picture.
    As for his mental illness, he was always a bit of a peculiar type with a singular focus. Was never social.
    The hallucinations in the movie were pure Hollywood, as John never had a visual hallucination, but voices don’t film well. He found the movie inaccurate and disturbing. Yes, his words, he and Alicia lived quite near me and I spoke to him as a neighbor, not in any professional way, and not often. My first meeting with him was driving home from the Princeton Y on a rainy day. he knocked on my window, told me he often saw me at the grocery store, so I was safe and asked for a ride home. Our conversations were confined to grocery store and the old West Coast Video, when that was the thing.
    Heredity? Probably. His son from the earlier girlfriend is, as far as I can see, quite normal. His son with Alicia is quite sick and presents in an almost scary fashion. Often schizophrenia does not fully present itself until mid 20s, so having it blossom at Princeton would not be a shock.
    I don’t know about religion, but I never saw even the slightest hint of a decoration on his home. I don’t recall if the Nassar book was particularly illuminating on that issue.
    I am expecting vol 2 of the Ford book, soon.

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  2. A.H. Lloyd Avatar
    A.H. Lloyd

    That’s interesting. I’m not shocked that an Ivy League scholar is secular, it is just something that is never addressed even in the negative.
    I’m not quite done with Vol. I of Sanders’ biography, but I’m enjoying it quite a bit.

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  3. CN Avatar
    CN

    Hearing voices does not equal intrusive thoughts, or repetitive thoughts, btw. In Beautiful MInd, Nash tried to rip the transmitter out of his arm because he believed it was external stimuli and placed by the government as represented by Ed Harris. The idea of transmitters is common among the more scientific or sci-fi schizophrenics (and I’ve seen scars on people who tried to dig the transmitter out of their skin), others believe it is God, Satan or someone being deliberately cruel, but it is auditory. And they will turn toward and respond in the direction of the voices. They plug or cover their ears, people don’t do that for intrusive or racing thoughts. You may smile, laugh to yourself, but you don’t turn in another direction and answer or yell at your thoughts to stop.
    Bipolars or depressed people with psychotic features also experience hallucinations, btw. And sleep deprived people can experience, probably hypnogogic, hallucinations. It’s complicated.
    I also started, while I wait for volume II, The Shifting of the Fire, and ordered his poems. I always like a good psychological component to characters.

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  4. A.H. Lloyd Avatar
    A.H. Lloyd

    Ford Madox Ford is an extremely complex individual, especially given the time he lived in. No one today thinks anything of an author collecting wives throughout his career, but back then it was truly shocking.
    I’m also interested in how he can’t just admit that’s he’s an incurable philanderer. A cad. A rake. There were such men back then of course, but Ford would not admit to being one of them. He clung to his English Gentleman identity quite fiercely.
    The other aspect is that he could not accept that it is common for the passion of courtship and marriage to fade under the pressures of career and children, and that this enriches the marriage. Or just that there is more to life than seeking sexual fulfillment at any cost. Waugh understood this, but then again his conversion to Catholicism “stuck.”
    Of course, if he had done these things, books like The Good Soldier and Parade’s End would never have been written. So I guess it worked out for us, if not for him.

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