A Beautiful Mind

By Teddy Durgin
tedfilm@aol.com

Only a Gladiator could defeat Ali, and Russell Crowe will likely give Smith the biggest run for his money as Best Actor come Oscar time. Crowe is captivating as John Nash, the brilliant Princeton mathematician (NOT the basketball GM who ran the Washington Bullets into the ground) who won a Nobel prize earlier this decade after years of battling paranoid schizophrenia. Ron Howard has directed a film about a mentally ill man that is alternately touching and electrifying. Quite an accomplishment!

The film begins with Nash's first days on the Princeton campus, and he is already a tortured soul. Smarter than the smartest around him, he lacks only the one great idea that will distinguish him. Soon, Nash's talents propel into the academic limelight and a job at MIT. There, he teaches a class and meets the woman of his dreams, played by the luminous Jennifer Connelly. But as his responsibilities begin to mount, Nash's beautiful mind becomes dangerous. This was at a time when the Defense Department used our best scientists and mathematicians to make weapons, break codes, and decipher counter-intelligence. I won't give too much more away if you don't know the story of this great man (who still teaches at Princeton today). Suffice to say, Nash soon finds himself in a battle for his very sanity, against demons both real and imagined.

This is, by far, Howard's best film. His direction draws us into the warped psyche of an impaired genius, and the result is quite riveting. Lesser filmmakers would revel in the suspense aspects of the story, or try and dazzle us with odd imagery as Nash's delusions threaten to overtake him. Howard finds the meat of his film in the great love story of Nash and his wife.

This movie will place high on my 10 Best list for 2001. It is at all turns a wonderful romance, riveting character study, and compelling mystery. Here's a little conundrum for the real Nash to figure out: Just how did screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, the man who wrote the absolutely awful Batman and Robin and Lost in Space movies, find it within himself to pen this exquisite work?!

I guess some mysteries weren't meant to be solved.

A Beautiful Mind is rated PG-13 for thematic material and sexual content.