Recommendation: 4/5 Stars
The Cinephile’s Journey is an attempt to watch and review every film that has won The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar for Best Picture.
Plot: “After John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish.” -IMDB
Review: I find the brilliance of A Beautiful Mind boils down to the simple fact that we cannot trust the world we are seeing through the eyes of our main character. Narrators we cannot trust has become a well-worn trope in film and television storytelling, but upon the release of this film, it still felt new and exciting.
John Nash (Russell Crowe) is a man lost to the pursuit of an original idea. Without a doubt, he is a peculiar man defined by ego and hubris. As he alienates classmates, blows off classes, and searches for a mathematical equation as ground-shaking as the theory of relativity, I found it nearly impossible to root for or like him. With seeds of distrust planted throughout this script, I only liked this character when I discovered his oddities could be something more.
With an original idea firmly in grasp, a cast of characters surrounds Nash. At first, they seem innocent enough. A college roommate who pulls John out of his own thoughts and into the real world, a young girl who loves him unconditionally, and a government agent who recognizes his brilliance. Together, they push John toward important work. Cracking codes for his country, we believe he is a rare mind with a power few men possess. But there is a twist here that will require me to spoil the end of this movie (I have warned you).
John meets the love of his life, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), has a child, and continues his cryptography work, but it is here he slips into an unseen world. The peculiarities of the man turn into madness. His wife puts clues together and all signs point toward a world that is falsely constructed. With the help of professionals and friends, we learn John is delusional, paranoid, and deeply schizophrenic.
This truth places John on a long and winding path toward some version of healthy. Filled with roadblocks that will often leave him absent from the world, repeatedly falling back into old habits, and a wife exhausted to her core, the final act of this film is a journey toward balance and a plan that works for John.
Lots of films have attempted to tell stories about the struggle of mental illness, but few deliver such a beautiful triumph as this one. From beginning to end, it felt like a rollercoaster filled with emotional highs and lows as we watch its main character face adversity. With each iteration of John Nash, we find something to cheer for and moments of empathy.
Be good to each other,
Nathan
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