Crowe captures audiences with ‘A Beautiful Mind’
Courtesy Photo
■ Ron Howard offers viewers a
thought-provoking trip through
time, and into one man’s
brilliant, and beautiful, mind
‘A Beautiful Miner
Starring Russell Crowe, Ed Harris
and Jennifer Connelly
By Lisa Toth
Oregon Daily Emerald
Since the film’s Dec. 21 release,
“A Beautiful Mind,” starring Rus
sell Crowe, has been marked as a
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likely candidate for Best Picture,
Best Actor and Best Supporting Ac
tress Oscar nominations. Awards
should most certainly follow the tal
ent that pours from this movie.
Crowe, last year’s Best Actor win
ner for his performance in “Gladia
tor,” offers an equally powerful per
formance in this Ron Howard flick.
The film is based on the real life of
John Forbes Nash Jr. (played by
Crowe), who won the Nobel Prize
for his game theory of economics.
The brilliant mathematician, now
in his late 70s, started out as a gradu
ate student at Princeton who was
isolated from his peers by his intel
ligence and unfriendly personality.
Howard uses Akiva Goldsman’s
script to detail the world inside
Nash’s head that he imagines as he
ages over time. This biography/dra
ma details Nash’s marital struggles
with his wife (played by Jennifer
Connelly) and his Recovery from
paranoid schizophrenia.
Along the way, the viewer be
comes so taken in by Nash's schizo
phrenic creations—three principle
characters he invents — that they
become accepted. The characters,
Nash’s outgoing college roommate,
a young girl and a secret govern
ment agent (played by Ed Harris),
are so convincing in their roles that
the audience assumes they are com
pletely real. They resist the idea that
the characters are not real, as though
the real world was lying to them.
The film, based on the 1994 novel
by Sylvia Nasar, also stars Christo
pher Plummer, Paul Bettany and
Adam Goldberg in supporting roles.
The story opens in 1947 and ends
in 1994. While it may have been eas
ier to represent life in 1994, the film
also accurately depicts the costum
ing and setting of the earlier years.
This was made easier by setting the
film in locations such as Harvard
and Yale universities, which didn't
change much over time.
Howard and his crew mastered
the details of houses, cars and cloth
ing of the different time periods.
The film’s visual effects also remain
true to the coloring used in films of
the corresponding time periods,
comparable to the coloring in the
Golden Globe Award-winning film
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
This thought-provoking film also
defines the basis of love and com
mitment. Nash’s wife sticks with
him despite his delusions, through
a particular type of adversity that
showed little hope of recovery.
The accepted cure of the time for
paranoid schizophrenia only wors
ened Nash’s problem. Taking pills
made him more of a zombie and use
less to his family and those around
him. What left people still sitting
spellbound through the credits was
that Nash defeated his own psycho
logical disorder through his willpow
er and his own intellect. He was able
to figure out that the people he had
invented in his mind were not real.
The film, which runs about 130
minutes, is rated PG-13 for intense
thematic material, sexual content
and a scene of violence.
Contact features/Pulse editor Lisa Toth
at lisatoth@dailyemerald.com.
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