The sublime pain of genius

A Beautiful Mind comes to our screens with "serious Oscar contender‚" stamped all over it. Russell Crowe for Best Actor, Jennifer Connelly for Best Supporting Actress, Ron Howard for Best Director, a Best Screenplay for Akiva Goldsman, and a nomination for Best Picture, this is the kind of film the Oscar loves. It’s a true life story. There’s humor and pathos, there’s a debilitating disease — in this case, delusional schizophrenia, there’s triumph over adversity — winning a Nobel Prize; all the major ingredients are there for Oscar success. So, does the film deliver on all the hype and promise?

Thematically, it explores the curious world of true genius. The term is bandied about and heaped on liberally nowadays; so the film is a sober reminder of just how true the old adage is that genius always borders on insanity. To have so much intelligence also means one is a misfit in this world. The pressure to adapt, to interact, to live within the parameters of normal society‚ all these create enormous pressure on the gifted.

As the film succinctly portrays, the gift is double-edged and is also a curse. This heady environment of world-class mathematicians and academia is presented to us. Kudos to Director Ron Howard for taking us into this rarefied world and keeping it accessible to the audience. With humor and self-deprecation, the essentially human elements of these eggheads, are highlighted.

Petty jealousies, insecurities, Pyrrhic victories, obsessions and enlightenment; we understand all of these and they rule our lives just as they rule mathematician John Nash’s world. The circumstances, the stakes may change; but the emotions evinced are common to all of us and so we empathize.

Russell Crowe is never less than impressive. Fast turning into the Tom Hanks of this first decade of the New Millennium, he gets his third Best Actor nomination in three years. Having won last year for Gladiator may be a minus for his chances this year; but this is certainly a tour de force of a performance for him. In my book, the irony if he loses will be that he deserves the Best Actor plum far more for this portrayal.

Nominated for The Insider two years ago and having been bypassed then, Russell still stands as only the third actor to win back-to-back Best Actor Awards. He ages over 40 years in the course of the film and it’s to his credit that he never goes over the top with this portrayal of Nobel Prize winner John Nash. Even the episodes of acute, delusional schizophrenia are done with restraint, understatement and at times, self-effacing humor.

Jennifer Connelly is an equally-luminous presence in the film. Student, then wife of Dr. Nash; she shows both maturity and depth, moving us to forgive her for House of the Spirits. From years as beautiful face and so-so actress, Jennifer comes full circle with this film and shows a range which heretofore had been absent in her celluloid appearances. She fully deserves the nomination and it would not surprise me if she takes home the prize.

Ron Howard takes the fish out of water‚ theme of one of his first films Splash and transports it to the ivy-league halls of Princeton. I know some will howl in protest over what follows; but I found the directorial touch a little too slick. There’s maybe still too much of the Happy Days in Ron as he’s constantly trying to put place a feel-good veneer on top of this film. He’ll go for the one visceral shocker (a scene in the sanitarium); but knows that one can never be too depressing and still make box office in the US market. Whereas a film like Frances (Jessica Lange portraying Frances Farmer) was set in the same era and depicted how mental disorders and instability were treated and unflinchingly rendered the subject, turning the film into a powerful and fascinating downer‚ A Beautiful Mind seems to always waver between tackling the subject head on and maintaining commercialism. Maybe it’s just me; but at some point I found it ironic how the audience was laughing at really tragic and pitiful circumstances because of throw away lines and calculated comedic situations. It’s the light‚ Howard touch that can either be described as deft or cunning, and you’re left to fill in the blanks on the connotation of these descriptions.

In fact, although perhaps unfair, I even had flashes of bumper stickers the studio could use to drumbeat the film, as we get closer to O-Day. Like You’re Never Alone with Schizophrenia‚ or John Nash? It Takes One to Tango. Fortunately, all these do not take away from the fact that the film is a fascinating study of a very special and gifted tragic individual. If the treatment is at times a bit too glib, the strength of the story far outweighs whatever reservations I may have in this regard. Go see this film and be fascinated by the life of John Nash and by Russell Crowe’s performance.