I’ve been putting this review off for about a month now. When I first watched A Beautiful Mind, I liked it a lot. The story was engaging and moving, and I appreciate the way Ron Howard didn’t go too far into Sappyland. The big reveal (I won’t spoil it) took me by surprise, and that was good. The effects were … well, effective and generally low-key, which I appreciate. The story’s resolution was a reasonable one.
The problem, I suppose, is that the further I got from watching it, the less I liked it.
Let’s get the biggest problem out of the way first. When I’m watching a film that’s been advertised as biographical but not a documentary, I don’t expect it to be 100% true. It wasn’t made to be a historical document, so I try not to judge it by that standard. At the same time, I do expect more than a passing similarity between the movie and its subject. And that’s what we got in A Beautiful Mind, a passing similarity.
I’m hardly a John Nash scholar, but I knew enough about him (and had heard enough grumblings about the movie) that I did a very little bit of looking on the internet. Screenplay writer Akiva Goldsman took out whole truckloads of real life drama (Nash’s first son, his homosexuality in the 1950s, the divorce from his wife) and put in new stuff (intense competition amongst his peers, Wheeler Labs, that pen ceremony) to make it look better. I also thought it odd that they never gave his son’s name in the movie. Even when he was an adult, the son has no name. (Someone correct me if I missed it.)
Moving past that, though, there were other problems. There’s a calculated feel to the whole affair. The golden glow through which the entire film is viewed, the overly-lush musical score, the sheer earnestness of the film. It’s all designed to win Oscars, and I cannot understate how much I hate that. I wish directors would just tell the story the best they can, and forget about the important awards that, in the end, mean right next to nothing.
All right, enough complaining. There were, after all, some things I liked quite a lot. I loved that the we joined the story with John making friends (and enemies) at Princeton and then after he moves on, they slowly fade into his past. This would have been easy to get wrong, either by having the friends disappear abruptly or stick around too long.
While the music was a bit weepy at times, I appreciated the choice to accompany the big chase scene in Parcher’s car with a smoother non-action scene score. That was one of my first tip offs that something was not what it seemed, and I appreciate the innovation.
My only complaint about the principal cast is that Jennifer Connelly (right, with Russell Crowe) didn’t have enough to do. Loathe as I am to mention the Oscars, she absolutely deserved recognition for her work in A Beautiful Mind. The middle of the night scene in the bathroom was wonderfully done, and Howard made a smart move by filming it in profile instead of head on. That could very well have ruined the scene.
In the end, A Beautiful Mind is an okay film, but it could have been great. I guess that’s my biggest issue with it.
SIMPSONS SIGHTING!
Season 15, My Mother the Carjacker
(It’ll be a few years before the season’s released and I can get a screencap, but Homer sees codes in the newspaper like John Nash did.)
