I was all prepared to sit back and enjoy another great performance from Russel Crowe, and get totally bamboozled by Nash’s mathematics too. But hey, wait a minute, this is very nice, nothing about the maths, all about the man, rather his mind. I had a moving journey through the man and his mental torture.
The first thing that struck me about the story was the way, the main character’s (Nash, the mathematics Professor) prowess in mathematics and his famous GAME THEORY was reduced to background. From the outset the viewer is slowly but firmly invited to think with our man. Yes he is a genius, and yes his theory would make little sense to most of us, but the movie made us think like him, dream like the man.
There were moments when you thought like him, agreed with him, and then fought against the very same feelings he was fighting against. The scene where he codes the text, with Ed Harris watching over him is so very impressive, not just for the visual spectacle, but for the way it actually makes you feel the clockwork of his mind churning and throwing out answers.
The extent of his mental challenge is unravelled slowly. You know its coming, but it is soo subtle, that suddenly before you know it, you’ve branded him a nutcase and then you sympathise with him.
The story is deeply passionate about his family too. When he receives his Nobel Prize, theres a part of you yearning for him to give a great speech on human resilience and all that, but here too the truth is he has little to say and few to thank. Nash never doubted his own genius.
With every scene of his battle against Schizophrenia, you will him to win and fight, and each time he slips, you pull him through.
For a movie about a mathematics genius, A Beautiful Mind, involves the viewer to the end, you stay on, if only to justify your sympathies for the man. Filing out of the theatre, your memories of this movie are not going to be of the visuals, the dialogues, or the characters. You will only remember that John Forbes Nash pulled it through, and so did you....