A Beautiful Mind
(2001)
As Best Picture Oscar winners go, is there
a more obvious example of a mediocre, heartwarming film serving up a fast-food
illusion of depth and profundity? In a case of the bland leading the bland, Ron
Howard directed Akiva Goldsman script, resulting in one of the most fatuous
representations of mental illness to make it to the big screen. No wonder the
Academy went wild for it.
I’ve said that I don’t think the mark of a
film based on a historical incident or figure should be its faithfulness but,
rather, its dramatic integrity. A
Beautiful Mind is as good an example as any of failure at this. The film
diverges significantly from John Nash’s experiences, both in terms of his life
(be it his divorce and remarriage, alleged homosexual relationships, child from
an earlier relationship, the mawkishly sentimental “captain, my captain” pen
giving scene) and illness (he did not experience visual hallucinations, only
aural, thought he was in contact with extra-terrestrials, experienced
anti-Semitic episodes and took no medication from 1970 onwards), but the
motivation for this is of the least laudable kind. Nash’s life is to be
rendered palatable and anonymously heroic, with all the hard edges and dramatic
meat scraped off.
As such, I’m sure there was a good film to
be made from Nash’s troubled life. But reducing it to the most trite “triumph
over adversity” formula serves no one but the moneymen. It’s not as if Howard
and Goldsman persevere in ensuring the audience understands why the Nash
equilibrium became so important; indeed, following the most bland of visual
explanations for how Nash came up with the theory, Howard throws any interest
in it away. In every case, Howard renders the workings of Nash’s mind in with
an astonishingly patronising “madness for dummies” approach, which may just
betray how Ronnie actually thinks. He also liberally sprinkles fairy dust on
top; this man’s mind is so magical it requires the wondrousness of James
Horner’s emotive piano to hammer home the point.
Goldsman, infamously, penned Batman & Robin before apparently
redeeming himself with an Oscar win for this script. Yet nothing he has written
since (save for his small screen work on Fringe)
has suggested a man of hidden talents. His solution for telling Nash’s story (keeping
the reality of his illness from both him and the viewer until a crucial moment)
is fine if you’re disinterested in really understanding the man; if you’re
cynical enough to use a twist structure as “shock treatment” for the viewer, to
alert them to his mental state, you really shouldn’t be surprised at how your
story comes up short in numerous other respects. As it is the sub-Fight Club element is plain cheap; like
everything here it testifies to how low the bar has been set.
Tom Cruise was apparently lobbying for the
part of Nash, but his previous form with Howard didn’t seem to curry sufficient
favour and Russell Crowe scored the role. I’m not sure Cruise could have pulled
it off, even given his experience with old pro Hoffman on Rain Man to draw on (by that comparison, I’m not foolishly
comparing autism with mental illness but drawing attention to roles where the
physical difference is the first thing you see, and tends to attract awards
recognition – another example would be Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot). Certainly, Crowe gives a horribly mannered
performance. There’s never any doubt that this is an actor trying to
approximate the behaviour of someone who is schizophrenic, rather than “being”
the role. Crowe was superb in his physical transformation for The Insider a few years previously, but
Howard encourages only the broadest and most cartoonish version of Nash. The
director is so unsubtle that, with the trio of “friends” he sees around every
corner and the constant tinkling music, you’d think he was taking the piss if
you didn’t know better.
The one bright spot is Jennifer Connelly as
Nash’s wife. Somehow she finds a truthfulness and substance that lends the film
a weight it scarcely deserves. She anchors Crowe’s flailing gurning and more than
deserved her Oscar (both Crowe and Connelly appear in Goldsman’s upcoming
directorial debut, Winter’s Tale).
For a while there, Howard was Hollywood’s
brightest star of journeyman directors. His stylistic fingerprints are minimal,
aside from an overpowering sense of well-meaning and an absence of intellectual
curiosity. He has good, wholesome tastes and runs in the fastest opposite
direction to anything provocative. But in the decade since Mind, he’s done little of merit (during the decade prior to it,
there were a couple of above average movies like Apollo 13 and Ransom).
Arguably the man who massacred the Grinch, and inflicted two crappy Robert
Langdon “thrillers” on audiences has lost even the touch that ensured
undemanding but serviceable fare. And Crowe’s steer cleared of anything
stretching himself since (perhaps wisely), his vocal chords excepted (see A Good Year and Les Mis). As for Oscar, it is as poor an arbiter of quality as ever
but even more so when it comes to sentimentalised disability.
**
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