A Beautiful Mind

I watched a film the other day by the name of “A Beautiful Mind” which is directed by Ron Howard. I have not seen it before then and was glad to have watched it after. It was a very good film that definitely lived up to the hype that surrounds it.

This film was about the Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. It is the story of a man who is one of the greatest mathematicians, and a victim of schizophrenia.  Russell Crowe plays Nash in the film and Jennifer Connelly plays as his wife, Alicia, who is pregnant with their child when the first symptoms of his disease become apparent.  He is haunted by delusions in the film by imaginary characters who harass him throughout the film.  Nash is a man who descends into madness and then, unexpectedly, regains the ability to function in the academic world. Nash is inspired by his wife and others to stand by him, to keep hope and, in her words in his darkest hour, "to believe that something extraordinary is possible."

Nash's schizophrenia takes visual forms in the movie as he believes he is being pursued by a federal agent (played by Ed Harris), and imagines himself in chase scenes that seem inspired by crime movies. He begins to find patterns where no patterns exist. He also believed for a time that Russians were sending him coded messages on the front page of the New York Times. Medication helps him improve Nash somewhat, but only when he takes the medication. Eventually newer drugs are more effective, and he begins a tentative re-entry into the academic world at Princeton.

When looking at some of the quotes by Nash regarding the movie made about him, the following and insightful information was revealed:

“Here it is simply a disease, which renders life almost but not quite impossible for me and my wife, before I became one of the lucky ones to pull out of the downward spiral.  Without this ‘madness’, Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten."

So when we look back and reflect on Nash, would he have been another individual who had lived and forgotten without his madness? Would he still have won the Nobel Prize?

After watching this brilliant form, I cannot help but be reminded of the novel “A Question of Power” by Bessie Head. It is nearly the same battle of self conflict as Elizabeth, the main character in the novel, fights off her “demons” and a mental breakdown to maintain her sanity. She is also dealing with these imaginary characters as they are constantly attacking her throughout the novel, trying to break her down. Although Nash, in the movie, uses prescriptions and inspiration in the movie to find himself again, Elizabeth is able to overcome her mental breakdown and find herself by the end of the novel by confronting her “demons”. She, like Nash, is able to maintain her sanity and learn who she is by the end of the novel.  At the end of the novel, Elizabeth is able to recover from her three year journey to find her place in the world. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anybody to watch. It is a very inspirational story that made me realize that we are all vulnerable, to some degree, of losing our self regardless of intelligence, age, sex, and/or location.  I would also suggest that if this film intrigues you, that you take a look at Bessie Head’s novel “A Question of Power”. They are both good accounts of self conflict and overcoming personal differences through confrontation and inspiration.