I feel like this movie belongs in a box set with The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.
Russell Crowe stars in this Best Picture winning movie about the American Nobel laureate and mathematician John Nash. He’s no Gladiator, but he’s nice enough.
The best part about the movie is that they think they can casually age Russell Crowe from 20 years old to 66 in a two hour movie.
Not to mention his Noah costar and on-screen wife, Jennifer Connelly! And if you’re wondering why this is included in a Wikipedia article called “List of films featuring whitewashed roles,” Alicia Nash is El Salvadorian. Noah is in this list too, obviously.
Anyway, I’m getting distracted. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, who in 1948 began his doctorate program at Princeton, where he received the John S. Kennedy fellowship. Determined to discover something wholly original, Nash skips all his classes.
But he ends up writing a paper on equilibrium that wins him the respect of his colleagues and the commendation of his superiors.
Also his fun and crazy roommate, Charles.
Soon, Nash begins a career as a mathematician, where he sometimes helps the government with covert operations to crack codes from the Soviet Union.
And he meets his wife! He wins her over despite being incredibly socially awkward.
But as the movie reminds us, Nash is one of the best pattern recognition experts in the world.
He woos her with this party trick where he can find any shape he wants amongst the stars. I looked up at the stars that night and counted three… so… triangle.
But just when you think this rich, straight, white man has it all, the movie reveals a twist! And even though they were on the verge of losing me because almost everything in the first hour goes exactly as Nash plans, I found it to be really heartbreaking.
I won’t give it away, but the rest of the movie finds Nash desperately trying to hold on to that passion for numbers and discovery that made him endearing in the early part of the film. Disgraced, he tries to return to Princeton, and eventually finds a loving community amongst the 80s and 90s students (the 70s ones were so mean to him). And then he wins a Nobel Prize!
The movie is ultimately a story about love, how important it is and what it can do to transform people who are lost. A Beautiful Mind tackles mental illness in a way that is sort of refreshing for its time.
Plus the movie is incredibly prominent in our pop culture consciousness. Whenever you see a room filled with papers covering every surface with an attempt to reach a singular conclusion, that’s A Beautiful Mind reference.
A Beautiful Mind went on to win 4 Oscars, including a whopping two for Ron Howard… who directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas the year before.
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