A Beautiful Mind

8.68

Rating: 8.68 | Votes: 53

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A Delayed Appreciation
The 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind" certainly has it's points of beauty, but during the first hour or so I was thinking it to be just another an average drama - I was neither impressed nor bored - thus the three stars. However, the 135 minute movie dramatically improved from there. With certain elements of suspense it even had the makings of a good thriller and I almost gave it 4 stars. Yet to be fair, as an above average film I would rate it at least 3 1/2 out of 5 if I could - after all, it did win 4 Oscars. An imaginative film indeed!

Crowe shines with great finesse in this difficult role
AFter Cinderella Man, this is my second favorite movie done by Crowe. Ron Howard the director and Crowe made a billiant collaboration here. All the actors were superb. No one else could have played Nash like Crowe did. He should have won an Oscar for this. I love the musical score as well. Captivating. A must see by all.

Schizophrenia and the Non-dual Perspective
I thoroughly enjoyed 'A Beautiful Mind.' It's one of those very rare movies made for an audience of reasonably mature and intelligent adults as opposed to low IQ inner-city gangbangers with a mental age of around 14 who seem to be the target audience of most Hollywood fare today.

The plot is different and holds our interest to the end; the camera work is technical perfection with none of that faddish hand-held camera nonsense; the Princeton settings are gorgeous; and the actors are without exception excellent, with Russell Crowe giving a sensitive and totally convincing performance as the brilliant and afflicted mathematician, John Nash, a man suffering from schizophrenia.

But what exactly is schizophrenia? According to Wikipedia, it is "a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia).

This seems clear enough, since we have all been convinced of the reality of "mental" illness. But if we turn to Thomas Szasz Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry we find a highly intelligent professional psychiatrist informing us that, not only is schizophrenia a myth, but that there is no such thing as "mental illness", the term "illness" being something that can legitimately be applied only to physical bodies and not to minds, mind being something of an entirely different order.

So what's going on here? In the movie, Nash is eventually able to come to terms with his schizophrenia by realizing that the figures he continues to hallucinate, and who seem to him to be flesh-and-blood realities every bit as real as the people around him, are wholly illusory and simply projections of his own mind.

If he had been born in Asia and had come in contact with the non-dual perspective he might have learned that the whole of reality is similarly a projection of mind and entirely illusory; that his mind is only doing what is natural to it in projecting a world made entirely of Consciousness; and that the only difference between him and others is that, by some quirk, his mind has added a few extra events (which only he is able to perceive) to the world he shares with all of us. He might then have gone on to realize that, by leading him to a truer understanding of mind, what seemed to him at first to be a curse was in fact a Grace.

These notions lead us into the field of Nonduality and anyone interested in pursuing them further could do no better than to read a book such as Leo Hartong's Awakening to the Dream. Of the vast literature on Nonduality, this is the simplest and clearest account I've ever found.

But to return to the movie, please don't miss it. At its best, the modern movie can and should be a work of art, and the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' certainly qualifies as that.

I avoid dramas.
I don't usually go for dramas, but I watched this at someone's house and fell in love. Very well done, and fascinating. The only drama I own on video

A Beautiful Mind (Full Screen Awards Edition)
At Princeton University, John Nash struggles to make a worthwhile contribution to serve as his legacy to the world of mathematics. He finally makes a revolutionary breakthrough that will eventually earn him the Nobel Prize. After graduate school he turns to teaching, becoming romantically involved with his student Alicia. Meanwhile the government asks his help with breaking Soviet codes, which soon gets him involved in a terrifying conspiracy plot. Nash grows more and more paranoid until a discovery that turns his entire world upside down. Now it is only with Alicia's help that he will be able to recover his mental strength and regain his status as the great mathematician we know him as today. "A Beautiful Mind" is absolutely great, not only does it have a strong point and an importaint message to the viewer, but it delivers it in a touching and sensitive, partly even humourous kind of way, with the help of powerful actors, a great screenplay and even a few special effects to boost it up. This movie succeeds on every level.

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