I can imagine the pitch session that went on in the Hollywood backrooms for this movie.
Exec #1: Hi Ron! I hear you have a new movie you want us to back for you?
Ron Howard: Yeah, it’s gonna be GREAT! It’s about this guy, John Forbes Nash a ma…
Exec #2: Cool, that’s the guy that killed Kennedy, right? The President-shooter angle, I LOVE it!
Ron Howard: Umm, no…Nash was a brilliant mathematician, went to Princeton in the 50′s
Exec #3: Kennedy was killed by a mathematician? I must have missed that class
Ron Howard: No no no, Nash didn’t kill anybody. He was a mathematician that was diagnosed as a paranoid-schizophrenic and later went on to win the Nobel prize.
Exex #3: Para-what schizo-who?
Ron Howard: He sees people who aren’t there.
Exec #3: He sees dead people? GREAT angle!
Ron Howard: No no no just imaginary people.
Exec #2: Umm, Ron, you want us to make a movie about a crazy math guy? Does he, like, do anything interesting? Maybe he could kill someone?
Ron Howard: No, he doesn’t KILL anyone, he just overcomes incredible odds and manic delusions to completely redefine the course of modern economics.
Exec #3: I dunno…the mathematician angle seems kind of weak, how about we make him…an astronaut? People LOVE astronaut movies!
Ron Howard: You can’t MAKE him an astronaut, this is a REAL-LIFE story, Nash was a mathematician!
Exec #1: Ron, baby, you know we love you. And we owe you big-time for making you do the voice-over in Osmosis Jones, but come on! A crazy mathematician? You may as well ask us to make Pauly Shore a star!
Exec #3: Sorry, Ron, better luck next time.
Ron Howard: Did I mention Russell Crowe wants to star?
Exec #2: Sally, QUICK, get us the contracts!!
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You can certainly tell it’s Oscar season as the buzz runs thick for A Beautiful Mind. But ignore the hype — you’ll hear about the great direction, the great story — and really, it’s an exaggeration.
A Beautiful Mind is about one thing, and one thing alone. Russell Crowe’s ability to act, to become John Forbes Nash so completely as to make you believe you are watching the real man on screen. In the hands of any lesser actor, this movie would have been so much tripe as to be unwatchable, but to watch Crowe glide effortlessly from brilliant savant to manic paranoid and back again is truly one of the great pleasures of movie-going this year.
The other piece of brilliant casting that merits mention is that of Jennifer Connelly as his wife Alicia. There are moments in the movie where Nash is so far gone in his psychosis that it would become the entire focus of the movie if not for Connelly’s performance as the loving and devoted wife, which ‘humanizes’ the movie, and gives it a heart and soul.
Throw in supporting roles by the always terrific (and Ron Howard fave) Ed Harris, and Paul Bettany, who takes on a character remarkably similar to his portrayal of Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale, and you find yourself enraptured by some of the great performances of the year.
Rating: The New York Times’ Sunday crossword, 8/10