A Beautiful mind [DVD]

Ron Howard won accolades (including several Academy Awards) for “A Beautiful mind” which navigates the story of real life Nobel Prize winning mathematician, John Nash. A prodigious if arrogant mastermind, the socially gauche Nash starts at Princeton in 1947 and, after discovering his revolutionary game theory, is soon working as a lecturer at MIT. After being commandeered by the CIA as a code-breaker, Nash works in covert operations of a mysterious nature. After marrying, and worrying that his clandestine assignments are too dangerous to continue with, Nash is hospitalised and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The film details Nash’s life over the next fifty years as he struggles with his mental illness and the weight of his intellect. The screenplay (adapted from the biography by Sylvia Nasar) takes great pains to emphasise that it is the support and love of his wife Alicia that aids this tortuous journey. Howard (Apollo 13, Parenthood, Cocoon) tackles an array of topics - psychological sickness, creativity, insanity, paranoia - but still manages to convey hope for his protagonist, partially (and controversially) by omitting any aspects of Nash’s life that does not fit the Hollywood mould of tortured genius. The adherence to predictable devices (soaring score, turgid dialogue, odes to the triumph of the human spirit) and a refusal to accommodate the more salacious (true) aspects of Nash’s life undermine an otherwise effective film.