A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Directed by Ron Howard
From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash Jr. experiences it all. As a brilliant but socially awkward mathematician, he made a groundbreaking discovery early in his career and stands on the brink of international acclaim. But as the handsome and arrogant Nash accepts secret work in cryptography, he becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy. His life takes a nightmarish turn and he soon finds himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery.
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For example, because this is DreamWorks'/Universal's Oscar tentpole, the running time falls safely in the "adult contemporary holiday respectable" range of 130-145 minutes, and it features a big name actor in a role that requires him to be some combination of mentally disabled ( I Am Sam , Forrest Gump, Rain Man), insane (As Good As It Gets), or that delicate combination of the two: a genius (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester ).
When Crowe first comes on the screen as the younger Nash, he is wrought with ticks and mannerisms that put me in mind of Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man."
(That’s what Dustin Hoffman did in “Rain Man.”)
Just ask Dustin Hoffman, whose character in 1988’s “Rain Man” had to balance being sharper than a calculator with being an autistic savant.
Yeah, that’s right: Ron Howard’s Rain Man perseverance saga comes readymade with a midpoint rhetorical shift that tries to excuse the schmaltz of John Nash’s (Crowe) fabricated existenz.
It's what I call the Rain Man performance.
His Mr. Parcher reminds a good deal of the evil doctors in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch; between this character and James Horner's score (a rip-off of Howard Shore's work with David Cronenberg), A Beautiful Mind invites undeserved comparisons to Cronenberg's The Fly and his adaptation of Naked Lunch: reclusive genius finds love even as he disintegrates into the madness of his ambition.
Even before the opening credits for Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind roll, the extensive previews for the movie have roused echoes of Scott Hicks’ barely five-year-old Shine, the equally fictionalized-but-based-on-truth story of pianist, David Helfgott.
Some actors get to do both: Geoffrey Rush in “Shine,” for one, and Russell Crowe here.
Or better yet, ask Geoffrey Rush, whose character in 1996’s “Shine” had to overcome years of physical and emotional abuse before he could be recognized as a master musician.
(Geoffrey Rush + Shine = Oscar; Angelina Jolie + Girl, Interrupted = Oscar.)
…better than Shine and among the most affecting ever made about co-existing with mental demons.
Add cheerfully inclined director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, responsible for mediocre Hollywood generica like “Batman and Robin” and “Practical Magic,” and you can almost be sure that the end product will be in the ghastly tradition of films like “Shine,” “Nell” and “Patch Adams,” with their bogus sympathy and showboating lead performances.
His Mr. Parcher reminds a good deal of the evil doctors in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch; between this character and James Horner's score (a rip-off of Howard Shore's work with David Cronenberg), A Beautiful Mind invites undeserved comparisons to Cronenberg's The Fly and his adaptation of Naked Lunch: reclusive genius finds love even as he disintegrates into the madness of his ambition.
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Crowe's portrayal of Nash is initially engaging for its crass belligerence and unintelligible West Virginia cum Wellington (Foghorn Leghorn cum Crocodile Dundee?) mumbled invectives; it degenerates when Crowe loses the accent and affects the twitches and jerks of movie disability (think Steve Martin post-possession in All of Me simultaneously channelling Ratso Rizzo).
Remember how the great Marlon Brando flopped in Guys and Dolls?
* Imagine Ocean's Eleven becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2001, on the way to trumping A Beautiful Mind at the Oscars.
Add cheerfully inclined director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, responsible for mediocre Hollywood generica like “Batman and Robin” and “Practical Magic,” and you can almost be sure that the end product will be in the ghastly tradition of films like “Shine,” “Nell” and “Patch Adams,” with their bogus sympathy and showboating lead performances.
To depict the rarefied demons of mental illness, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, taking a cue from his Batman and Robin, invents not one sidekick for poor Nash but three: a bumptious roommate named Charles (Paul Bettany), a little girl named Marcee (Vivien Cardone), and a CIA spook named Parcher (Ed Harris, who after playing a mentally ill person in Pollock plays a symptom here).
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As directed by Ron Howard, this becomes a tale not only of one man's battle to overcome his own disability, but of the overreaching power of love - a theme that has been embraced by films as diverse as It's a Wonderful Life and Rocky.
But it is also an inspiring piece of film making along the lines of Howard's other works such as "Apollo 13" and "Cocoon."
And especially coming from Howard, a director renowned (and sometimes critically reprimanded) for pumping big gusts of inspirational wind through pictures from Cocoon to Apollo 13, this is news.
With "A Beautiful Mind," Howard achieves the balance that has eluded him for years in directing sappy, feel-good movies such as "Cocoon" and "Parenthood."