A Beautiful Mind
December. 21,2001 PG-13In a decades-spanning biopic, brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. makes history in his field as schizophrenia sets in.
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Reviews
Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.
Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
The start seems like it could become interesting, but alas it does not. If you want to watch something with a similar premise watch "the imitation game", much more interesting. I don't understand how this movie got an oscar. It's tediously long and doesn't paint a true picture of what schizophrenia really is.
Yes you read that right, this is the best movie that I have watched in my life.... and 18 year long life. Initially I watched this movie 4 years ago when I was 14. Didn't know who John Nash was, never heard of him and I definitely never heard of the movie until I stumbled upon it and watched it out of boredom. But I have watched close to a thousand movies in my lifetime with no exaggeration, and a good percentage of them are critically acclaimed but this movie takes the top spot in my personal opinion. The intro was slow and the plot can sometimes be a bit difficult to understand as you watch it, as well as the movie did seem 3 hour long when I did watch it when I was 14 years old. But the towards the end of the movie everything starts to make sense, and a movie that was thought to be a tragedy turned out to have a happy ending that wasn't of the typical hollywood cringe. And the conclusion happened to bring tears to my eyes as a character who was thought to be a lost cause and a miserable man, lived his life towards his death with an optimistic approach with the help of his much-loyal life-long partner. Not a seemingly perfect movie, but that slight imperfection is the huge reason why I will rank this movie over the likes of The Dark Knight and The Godfather. Hell of a movie, 11/10.
John Nash's story is without a doubt interesting and certainly not easy to translate into a movie format. But that cannot be an excuse. We get a movie that is a bit of a heartbreaking drama, a bit of a spy action flick and a bit of a biographical picture (with many fictionalized parts). But it does nothing really exceptionally well. What it does well is to dumb everything down for a broad audience and to make it as little offending as possible.*SPOILERS*First, it would have been nice to see what makes John Nash actually a genius. We see him being awkward and weird, highly intelligent and constantly scribbling math on some surfaces. To the average movie audience it's clear: This man must be some sort of genius! Come on, don't treat your audience like that, Ron Howard! If you really must dumb it down, include maybe at least a reference to why he actually won the Nobel price and why his work was important. Well, at least we got the scene with the women in the bar.Secondly, many details of Nash's life are just wrong or fictionalized, which does not have to be a bad thing per se. For example, in "Amadeus" the writer's allowed themselves a lot of freedom with Mozart's life in order to tell a greater, romanticised story about art. But here a story that was not always very "clean" in reality is told in a fashion for maximum Oscars chances. It wants to be a story full of heart (and even sacrifices intelligence for that), but if you take a closer look, it is a calculated movie. Anything that could be offensive is left out. Just google Nash's real biography if you don't believe me.And this sugarcoating includes the depiction of schizophrenia. I don't have much insight into this mental illness but I'm sure it doesn't work in the way the movie shows us. Nash sees the same three imaginary people over and over again until we as an audience learn they are not real. Or are they? Initially, this state of confusion gave the movie interesting touch of mystery, that I actually enjoyed. I had no idea if this movie would stick to the sort-of-biopic-format or turn into an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.It's really hard to find anything else to compliment. The cinematography looks kind of flat? And I can't even say I'm a fan of Connelly's slightly expressionless acting. Ironically, she won an Oscar instead of Crowe, who actually was quite convincing.
I love how this movie starts with John Nash being so sure of himself. For me the love part is when he falls in love with his wife. It is amazing to me that love is so strong that she never gives up on him and although he never stops seeing his visions, she was always there by his side. Proof that behind every wise man is a powerful woman. My hats off to Alicia Nash for the strength. It does break my heart that the whole time these were visions and it makes it hard to believe until they break it down for you and show you the evidence.