Mush brain
Genius
biopic
deserves a stronger minded director.
A Beautiful
Mind descends into bathos just when the neat trick of
its first two-thirds clicks into focus. Director Ron Howard's
inability to resist giving schizophrenia the TV movie of the
week treatment cheapens his earlier achievement while undercutting
the very power of mathematician John Nash's story and Russell
Crowe's unsentimental portrayal.
By the time the
final credits rolled, I felt had--and wished a tougher minded
director like Michael Mann had reteamed with Crowe to tell
this complex man's story instead of perennially nice Howard.
Surely Mann would have avoided reducing the story into yet
another Hollywood tearjerker; whatever you think about Ali's
politics, it's clear he revels in complex characters and isn't
squeamish about showing any less than lovable traits.
In real life, affliction
doesn't turn difficult characters into pussycats or past enemies
into paragons of sympathy, as A Beautiful Mind would
have you believe. And John Nash apparently was not an easy
man to like: He was arrogant, driven and cared little for
social graces.
Howard does a good
job establishing these prickly traits early on, but doesn't
follow through after the extent of Nash's mental illness becomes
known. We see harrowing anger and delusions, but they're all
cloaked through a sympathetic veil.
He's no longer
abrasive genius but Pitiable Paranoid that all want to aid
in rehabilitation. Did Princeton really bend over backward
for its recalcitrant alum--especially one that could have
endangered its students? Maybe his diagnosis turned Nash into
a docile supplicant at the hands of former rivals, but surely
the situation wasn't as clear-cut as Howard presents it to
be, nor his re-entry into teaching as relatively seamless
as A Beautiful Mind suggests.
A few scenes of
a thrashing freakout and students imitating his awkward gait
ain't enough.
It's a shame Howard
couldn't help himself from his sentimental impulses, for there's
much to like about the movie. Early delusional scenes were
executed well, with just enough clues in retrospect to fit.
Other scenes like Nash's code-breaking moment at the Pentagon
have stylish power--just watch the camera pan around Crowe
as he gazes intently at the code. The director also does a
good job showing the frustration and horror of Nash's wife
(a startlingly thin Jennifer Connelly) at the danger his illness
poses to their marriage and child.
Alas, the heartwarming
progression of raving schizo to Nobel prize winner thanking
The Teary Wife That Stuck by Him seems a little too pat to
be true. What really happened, I kept wondering? For a movie
based on real life it simply didn't ring true.
If only Ron Howard
applied a little more rigor in his storytelling, it might
have been a beautiful movie instead of another paint by numbers
triumph over adversity.
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