My Life at the Movies 4.7.09: 2001 - A Beautiful Mind

Posted by DC Perry on 04.07.2009

It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.

This was the year. The one we'd been waiting for. All through my childhood, 2001 loomed as the year that was officially The Future™. We would all have jet packs, wear shiny silver jumpsuits, eat our food in pill form, and purchase babies from vending machines. The apes didn't pound hard enough on the monolith, though, and instead we got Segways and McGriddles.

The blessing and curse of touching that monolith cut deep into the best movie of the real 2001. Brilliance and insanity are two sides of the same coin, and both are on brilliant display in Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind.



2001 at a Glance

US President: George W. Bush
Median annual salary: $46,500
Gallon of gas: $1.38
Dozen eggs: $1.20
New house: $139,700
New car: $25,500
Movie ticket: $5.66
Boston Red Sox: 82-79, second place, American League East
Me: Staring down the barrel of impending fatherhood.


Super genius and borderline sociopath John Nash (Russell Crowe) arrives at Princeton, recipient of one half of the Carnegie Prize for mathematics. He begins something of a rivalry with Martin Hansen (Josh Lucas), recipient of the other half of the prize, but Nash's reclusive nature keeps him from truly competing with any of his fellows. He spends most of his time in his room, trying to apply algorithms to complex interactions he watches through his window, despite the constant distraction of his roommate Charles (Paul Bettany), a drunken, free-spirited English major. Nash is obsessed with finding a truly original idea, ignoring classes and common sense. He has a breakthrough one night at a bar when he realizes that the best result for he and his friends will come from each of them ignoring the most desirable woman and concentrating on a different one of her friends, thus ensuring that each ends up with a girl, even if she's not the most desirable of the group. (This is kind of a good description of Nash equilibrium. To learn more, consult your local library.)


I respect beer!

This breakthrough gets Nash his choice of appointments, and he joins MIT's Wheeler Lab, choosing classmates Sol (Adam Goldberg) and Bender (Anthony Rapp) to join him there. Due to his reputation as an expert code breaker, Nash is summoned to the Pentagon, where he decodes a complex system that reveals the locations of several Soviet raids into U.S. cities. Later that day, after complaining to Sol and Bender about the indignity of the trivial work he's assigned, including teaching undergraduates, Nash is approached by William Parcher (Ed Harris), a shadowy figure he had seen earlier that day at the Pentagon. Parcher gives Nash a top secret assignment decoding Soviet messages in various periodicals, injecting him with a chip that will give him the location of constantly changing drop points. His work on this project makes him increasingly paranoid, which strains his fledgling relationship with his student Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly).


While you rock and drool, the world will burn to ashes!

During a lecture at Princeton, where he is reunited with Charles and meets his niece Marcee (Vivein Cardone), Nash's paranoia overcomes him, and he flees the room only to be sedated and hospitalized. This feeds his paranoia, convincing him he has been captured by Soviet agents. He attempts to dig the chip out of his arm, but finds it has dissolved. In fact, of course, none of this is real. Parcher, his assignment, even his college roommate Charles, are delusions. Nash is forced to undergo insulin shock therapy almost daily, but even after this and the medication he is given upon his release, his grasp on reality is tenuous. He begins seeing Parcher again, who has convenient explanations that feed his delusions for everything that has happened, and he resumes his code breaking project. His obsession places Alicia, now his wife, and their child in jeopardy, and only after nearly killing both of them does he have an epiphany about the nature of his hallucinations.


She never gets any older.

Criticisms of the accuracy of this portrayal of John Nash's life are numerous. The life of the John Nash portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind bears only a passing resemblance to the life of the mathematician. Movie Nash's hallucinations start earlier, are visual as well as auditory, and require more medication to treat. Movie Nash's wife never divorced him, never let him stay with her despite their divorce, and never remarried him after he won his Nobel Prize, a prize for which only Movie Nash gave an acceptance speech.


So now that I know you're real, who are you and what can I do for you?

These criticisms are dead on. They also do no damage to the power of the movie. Movie Nash has no obligation to conform to Real Nash's life. He is a work of fiction, a hallucination for all of us to find ourselves in. The moment when he dismisses his imaginary chorus, especially Marcee, is a heart-wrenching moment that resonates with everyone who has left a comfortable world for an unfamiliar one. The fear of failure, or humiliation, of stepping outside of one's own mind, is one we all know, even if our fears don't take on faces and voices and assign us tangible tasks.


Good morning, eager young minds.

A Beautiful Mind shows us the power of our own to trap and confuse us. The more powerful the mind, the better the trap, which proves terrifying to John Nash, but should frighten all of us. A puzzle that can't be reasoned with, since the tool we use to reason is the puzzle, can only be solved by letting go. Even in The Future™, this is a lesson we must all learn, and this makes A Beautiful Mind the best movie of 2001.