A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind is the biography of schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash, portrayed by Russell Crowe. Jennifer Connelly plays as Nash's wife Alicia and Ed Harris is a figment of Nash's imagination, named Parcher. Ron Howard is the director of the film.

The movie begins when Nash arrives at Princeton University as a graduate student. Nash befriends his roommate Charles. While at Princeton Nash befriends other math and science students and following his time at Princeton, he is given a position at MIT. This is where he meets his future wife Alicia Larde after placing a calculus problem on the board for the class to solve. Nash meets William Parcher when he makes a return to Princeton. It is soon after he meets Parcher that Nash begins to lose touch with reality and becomes increasingly erratic. The film takes a deep look into schizophrenia and this allows the viewer to become caught up in Nash's distortion of reality. As his behavior continues to become worse, his wife finally proves to him that many of the people in his life, including his roommate Charles, have been figments of his imagination.

The storyline of this movie ties in well with "A Question of Power" by Bessie Head as Elizabeth is confronted with the same distortion of reality that Nash is dealing with. As each story continues to unfold, the audience is forced to make judgments about the main characters' sanity. Each character, Elizabeth and John Nash, slips in and out between dreams, hallucination, and reality while the reader/viewer is brought along for the journey. In the end, it appears that both Elizabeth and Nash appear to free themselves from the vast torment that they were subjected to as a result of their conscious and unconscious mind.

I felt that this movie did an excellent job portraying the difficulties of a disorder such as schizophrenia.  Russell Crowe provided yet another brilliant performance which allowed the viewer to experience his disorder and sympathize with Nash.  I was somewhat dissapointed with the fact that the movie did not elaborate on Nash's work and accomplishments.  Nash also appeared to draw frequently as he got older, actions in which I was unsure about.  I did not know if his drawing was a method for him to cope with his disorder or whether it was a direct result of the madness that he had to suffer through.  While vague in some spots, the movie overall was a masterful performance allowing the viewer to delve into a beautiful mind.