| A Beautiful Mind | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Ron Howard |
| Produced by | Ron Howard Brian Grazer |
| Screenplay by | Akiva Goldsman |
| Based on | A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar |
| Starring | Russell Crowe Ed Harris Jennifer Connelly Paul Bettany Christopher Plummer Josh Lucas Judd Hirsch |
| Music by | James Horner |
| Cinematography | Roger Deakins |
| Editing by | Daniel P. Hanley Mike Hill |
| Studio | Imagine Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Universal Studios (USA) DreamWorks (non-USA) |
| Release date(s) | December 21, 2001[1] |
| Running time | 135 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60 million |
| Box office | $313,542,341 |
A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American drama film based on the life of John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. The film was directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman. It was inspired by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. The film stars Russell Crowe, along with Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany and Christopher Plummer.
The story begins in the early years of a young prodigy named John Nash. Early in the film, Nash begins developing paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife and friends.
The film opened in US cinemas on December 21, 2001. It grossed over $313 million worldwide, and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role. It was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score. It was well-received by critics, but has been criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of some aspects of Nash's life.
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In 1947, John Nash (Russell Crowe) arrives at Princeton University. He is co-recipient, with Martin Hansen (Josh Lucas), of the prestigious Carnegie Scholarship for mathematics. At a reception he meets a group of other promising math and science graduate students, Richard Sol (Adam Goldberg), Ainsley (Jason Gray-Stanford), and Bender (Anthony Rapp). He also meets his roommate Charles Herman (Paul Bettany), a literature student, and an unlikely friendship begins.
Nash comes under increasing pressure to publish, both from the mathematics department chairman and in the form of rivalry with Hansen. But he refuses until he finds a truly original idea. His inspiration comes when he and his fellow graduate students discuss how to approach a group of women at a bar. Hansen quotes Adam Smith and advocates "every man for himself", but Nash argues that a cooperative approach would lead to better chances of success. This leads to a new concept of governing dynamics which Nash develops and publishes. On the strength of this he is offered an appointment at MIT where Sol and Bender join him.
Some years later, Nash is invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted enemy telecommunication. Nash is able to decipher the code mentally, to the astonishment of other codebreakers. He considers his regular duties at MIT uninteresting and beneath his talents, so he is pleased to be given a new assignment by the mysterious William Parcher (Ed Harris) of the United States Department of Defense, to look for patterns in magazines and newspapers in order to thwart a Soviet plot. Nash becomes increasingly obsessive about searching for these hidden patterns and believes he is followed when he delivers his results to a secret mailbox.
Meanwhile a student, Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly), asks him to dinner, and the two fall in love. On a return visit to Princeton, Nash runs into his former roommate Charles and meets Charles' young niece Marcee (Vivien Cardone), whom he adores. With Charles' encouragement he proposes to Alicia and they marry.
Nash begins to fear for his life after witnessing a shootout between Parcher and Soviet agents. He tells Parcher that he wants to quit his special assignment but Parcher blackmails him into staying. While delivering a guest lecture at Harvard University, Nash attempts to flee from what appear to be foreign agents, but he is forcibly sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility. He believes the facility is run by the Soviets who are trying to extract information from him.
Nash's doctor, Dr. Rosen (Christopher Plummer) tells Alicia that he has schizophrenia and that Charles, Marcee and Parcher only exist in Nash's imagination. Alicia investigates and finally confronts Nash with the unopened documents he had delivered to the secret mailbox. Nash is given a course of insulin shock therapy and eventually released. Frustrated with the side-effects of the antipsychotic medication he is taking, he secretly stops taking it. But this causes a relapse and he meets Parcher again.
After an incident where Nash endangers his infant son and accidentally knocks Alicia and the baby to the ground, she flees the house in fear with their child. Nash steps in front of her car to prevent her from leaving. He tells Alicia, "She never gets old", referring to Marcee, who although years have passed since their first encounter, has remained exactly the same age and is still a little girl. With this, he finally accepts that although all three people seem real, they are in fact part of his hallucinations. Against Dr. Rosen's advice, Nash decides not to restart his medication, believing that he can deal with his symptoms in another way. Alicia decides to stay and support him in this.
Nash approaches his old friend and rival, Martin Hansen, now head of the Princeton mathematics department, who grants him permission to work out of the library and audit classes. Years pass and as Nash grows older he learns to ignore his hallucinations. Eventually he earns the privilege of teaching again.
In 1994, Nash is honored by his fellow professors for his achievement in mathematics, and goes on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his revolutionary work on game theory. The movie ends as Nash and Alicia leave the auditorium in Stockholm; Nash sees Charles, Marcee, and Parcher standing to one side and watching him.
Producer Brian Grazer first read an excerpt of Sylvia Nasar's book A Beautiful Mind in Vanity Fair. Grazer immediately purchased the rights to the film. He eventually brought the project to Ron Howard, who had scheduling conflicts and was forced to pass. Grazer later said that many A-list directors were calling with their point of view on the project. He eventually focused on a particular director, who coincidentally was only available at the same time Howard was available. Grazer was forced to make a decision and chose Howard.[2]
Grazer then met with a number of screenwriters, mostly consisting of "serious dramatists", but he chose Akiva Goldsman instead, because of his strong passion and desire for the project. Goldsman's creative take on the project was to not allow the viewers to understand that they are viewing an alternate reality until a specific point in the film. This was done to rob the viewers of their feelings in the same way that Nash himself was. Howard agreed to direct the film based only on the first draft. He then requested that Goldsman accentuate the love story aspect.[3]
Dave Bayer, a professor of Mathematics at Barnard College, Columbia University,[4] was consulted on the mathematical equations that appear in the film. Bayer later stated that he approached his consulting role as an actor when preparing equations, such as when Nash is forced to teach a calculus class, and arbitrarily places a complicated problem on the blackboard. Bayer focused on a character who did not want to teach ordinary details and was more concerned with what was interesting. Bayer received a cameo role in the film as a professor that lays his pen down for Nash in the pen ceremony near the end of the film.[5] Greg Cannom was chosen to create the makeup effects for A Beautiful Mind, specifically the age progression of the characters. Russell Crowe had previously worked with Cannom on The Insider. Howard had also worked with Cannom on Cocoon. Each character's stages of makeup were broken down by the number of years that would pass between levels. Cannom stressed subtlety between the stages, but worked toward the ultimate stage of "Older Nash". It was originally decided that the makeup department would merely age Russell Crowe throughout the film; however, at Crowe's request, the makeup purposefully pulled Crowe's look towards the facial features of the real John Nash. Cannom developed a new silicone-type makeup that could simulate real skin and be used for overlapping applications, shortening the application time from eight hours to four hours. Crowe was also fitted with a number of dentures to give him a slight overbite throughout the film.[6]
Howard and Grazer chose frequent collaborator James Horner to score the film because of familiarity and his ability to communicate. Howard said, regarding Horner, "It's like having a conversation with a writer or an actor or another director." A running discussion between the director and the composer was the concept of high-level mathematics being less about numbers and solutions, and more akin to a kaleidoscope, in that the ideas evolve and change. After the first screening of the film, Horner told Howard: "I see changes occurring like fast-moving weather systems." He chose it as another theme to connect to Nash's ever-changing character. Horner chose Welsh singer Charlotte Church to sing the soprano vocals after deciding that he needed a balance between a child and adult singing voice. He wanted a "purity, clarity and brightness of an instrument" but also a vibrato to maintain the humanity of the voice.[7]
The film was shot 90% chronologically. Three separate trips were made to the Princeton University campus. During filming, Howard decided that Nash's delusions should always first be introduced audibly and then visually. This not only provides a visual clue, but establishes the delusions from Nash's point of view. The real John Nash's delusions were also only auditory. A technique was also developed to visualize Nash's epiphanies. After speaking to a number of mathematicians who described it as "the smoke clearing", "flashes of light" and "everything coming together", the filmmakers decided upon a flash of light appearing over an object or person to signify Nash's creativity at work.[8] Two night shots were done at Fairleigh Dickinson University's campus in Florham Park, NJ, in the Vanderbilt Mansion ballroom.[9]
Many actors were considered for the role of John Nash, including Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey, Jr., Nicolas Cage, Johnny Depp, Ralph Fiennes, Jared Leto, Brad Pitt, Alec Baldwin, Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Guy Pearce, Matthew Broderick, Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves. Cruise was lobbying for the part until Ron Howard ultimately cast Russell Crowe after he saw his performance in Gladiator.
The producers had not originally thought of Jennifer Connelly for the role of Alicia. She was starring in Requiem for a Dream with Jared Leto. Portia de Rossi, Catherine McCormack, Meg Ryan, Rachel Griffiths and Amanda Peet were among the many actresses who lobbied for the role of Alicia. However, Ryan dropped out before production began.
The narrative of the film differs considerably from the actual events of Nash's life. The film has been criticized for this, but the filmmakers had consistently said that the film was not meant to be a literal representation.[10] Also, Nasar concluded that Nash's refusal to take drugs "may have been fortunate," since their side effects "would have made his gentle re-entry into the world of mathematics a near impossibility."[11]
One difficulty was in portraying stress and mental illness within one person's mind.[12] Sylvia Nasar stated that the filmmakers "invented a narrative that, while far from a literal telling, is true to the spirit of Nash's story".[13] The film made his hallucinations visual and auditory when, in fact, they were exclusively auditory. Furthermore, while in real life Nash spent his years between Princeton and MIT as a consultant for the RAND Corporation in California, in the film he is portrayed as having worked for the Pentagon instead. It is true that his handlers, both from faculty and administration, had to introduce him to assistants and strangers.[8] The PBS documentary A Brilliant Madness attempts to portray his life more accurately.[14]
The differences were substantial. Few if any of the characters in the film, besides John and Alicia Nash, corresponded directly to actual people.[15] The discussion of the Nash equilibrium was criticized as over-simplified. In the film, schizophrenic hallucinations appeared while he was in graduate school, when in fact they did not show up until some years later. No mention is made of Nash's supposed homosexual experiences at RAND,[13][16] which Nash and his wife both denied.[17] Nash also fathered a son, John David Stier (born June 19, 1953), by Eleanor Agnes Stier (1921–2005), a nurse whom he abandoned when informed of her pregnancy.[18] The movie also did not include Alicia's divorce of John in 1963. It was not until Nash won the Nobel Memorial Prize that they renewed their relationship, although she allowed him to live with her as a boarder beginning in 1970. They remarried in 2001.[16]
During graduate school, it appears in the movie that Nash was averse to game playing, when, in fact, according to Nasar's biography, he spent many hours playing games and even created a new game called "John" or "Nash" (Hex). The game was somewhat similar to Go, but the shape of the squares became hexagons. The game, somewhat in conflict with the movie's mathematical point, was not one in which "nobody wins," but was "a zero-sum two-person game with perfect information in which one player always has a winning strategy" (p. 77). Though this game was not shown in the film's theatrical cut, a deleted scene shows Nash inventing the game and showing it off to his friends at Princeton.
Nash is shown to join Wheeler Laboratory at MIT, but there is no such lab. He was appointed as C.L.E. Moore Instructor at MIT.[19] The pen ceremony tradition at Princeton shown in the film is completely fictitious.[8][20] The film has Nash saying around the time of his Nobel prize in 1994: "I take the newer medications", when in fact Nash did not take any medication from 1970 onwards, something Nash's biography highlights. Howard later stated that they added the line of dialogue because it was felt as though the film was encouraging the notion that all schizophrenics can overcome their illness without medication.[8] Nash also never gave an acceptance speech for his Nobel prize because of fears the organisers had regarding his mental instability.[21] Around the time of the Oscar nominations, Nash was accused of being antisemitic. Nash denied this. [17]
A Beautiful Mind received a limited release on December 21, 2001, receiving positive reviews. It was later released in America on January 4, 2002. Rotten Tomatoes showed a 78% approval rating among critics with a movie consensus stating "The well-acted A Beautiful Mind is both a moving love story and a revealing look at mental illness."[22] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (his highest rating)[23] Mike Clark of USA Today gave three and a half out of four stars and also praised Crowe's performance and referred to as a welcomed follow up to Howard's previous film The Grinch;[24] however, Desson Thomson of the Washington Post found the film to be "one of those formulaically rendered Important Subject movies",[22] and Charles Taylor of Salon Magazine gave the film a scathing review, calling Crowe's performance "the biggest load of hooey to stink up the screen this year".[25] The mathematics in the film were well-praised by the mathematics community, including John Nash himself.[5]
During the five-day weekend of the limited release, A Beautiful Mind opened at the twelfth spot at the box office,[26] peaking at the number two spot following the wide release.[27] The film went to gross $170,742,341 in North America and $313,542,341 worldwide.[28]
A Beautiful Mind was released on VHS and DVD in the United States on June 25, 2002.[29] The DVD set includes audio commentaries, deleted scenes and documentaries. The film was also released on Blu-ray in North America on January 25, 2011.[30]
In 2002, the film was awarded four Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay (Akiva Goldsman), Best Picture (Brian Grazer and Ron Howard), Best Director (Ron Howard), and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jennifer Connelly). It also received four other nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Russell Crowe), Best Film Editing (Mike Hill and Daniel P. Hanley), Best Makeup (Greg Cannom and Colleen Callaghan), and Best Original Score (James Horner).[31] The 2002 BAFTAs awarded the film Best Actor and Best Actress to Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, respectively. It also nominated the film for Best Film, Best Screenplay, and the David Lean Award for Direction.[32] At the 2002 AFI Awards, Jennifer Connelly won for Best Featured Female Actor.[33] In 2006, it was named #93 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers. The film was also nominated for Movie of the Year, Actor of the Year (Russell Crowe), and Screenwriter of the Year (Akiva Goldsman).[34]
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