Revisiting 'A Beautiful Mind'
Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 3:31PM by Patrick Ball
Young Patrick and his favourite (at the time)
In the winter of 2001-2002, I was a plucky 8th grade “star” of my basketball team, son of a football coach, and an emerging film fan obsessed with all things James Bond, Star Wars, and Tom Cruise. A blissful innocent, bumbling around the world in a haze of All American normalcy. It would be my final year of innocence.
That following winter I would be clutched by the gay agenda, indoctrinated into a world of actresses, wig styling, and the unending delights of the beleaguered 1950s housewife. I would be snatched out of the closet by the twin hands of The Hours and Chicago, never to return. But as much as my love of film would come to be irrevocably shaped by a Zeta jazz square and a stroll into the river Ouse, one film lingered in my memory from the before times. I carry it with me to this day as a fond curio, a faded photo from the old country; That movie was A Beautiful Mind...
I thought I was the height of adult sophistication when I, at age 14, would tell people my favorite movie was A Beautiful Mind. A Best Picture winner about a mathematician?? It’s called taste. Cut to 20ish years later and…I’ve seen a lot more movies. And so has everyone else, which leaves me feeling less than surprised that the reputation of A Beautiful Mind in the pantheon of Best Picture winners has come under attack in recent years. I watched it over and over back then, but I hadn't seen it in 15+ years.
So, it was time for a re-watch. A dive back into the long-estranged, arms of Movies About Men. Will the warm nostalgia of a time long forgotten wash over me and obscure any narrative flaws? Did Russell Crowe originate the smize? Does the movie make any sense?
I don’t have all the answers, but here are 10 thoughts, in no particular order, as I rewatched A Beautiful Mind for the first time as an adult...
1. The score slaps to this day
2. Really could use a Legally Blonde style opening song, I think Oscar voters really respond to Hoku.
3. This Crowe performance is instantly mannered, and initially takes you out of it a bit, but in the end I found it to be compelling and committed. It’s a very different Crowe than we’ve seen in some time, in many ways this performance was the end of an era for him. But, I kind of expected myself to come into this rewatch ready to snicker and I found him both warmer and thornier than I remembered. I’m glad Denzel was able to take home the gold that year, but I still really like this performance.
4. Obsessed with Jennifer Connelly’s rattan wedges when she discovers John’s shack of delusion and runs in the rain (all supporting actresses should have to run in the rain to win).
5. Where has Josh Lucas been????? I miss this era of early 2000s men: Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Ed Harris looking *exactly* like my dad, baby Paul Bettany!? What a time.
6. Speaking of: for how much I watched this movie as a kid, I completely forgot Ed Harris was in it. And I don’t even think I knew who Christopher Plummer was at the time, so when he appeared that was a moment.
7. Nice production design: good use of the Ivy League campuses, the deterioration of Nash’s office spaces, the change in the family homes as their fortunes change. Well designed by Wynn Thomas, probably deserved a nomination considering how iconic John Nash’s conspiracy spider webs became.
8. Jennifer Connelly is fascinating in this. Another Oscar win that I feel like people shrug at now, but it's a really interesting performance. Yes, she has the glass throw and scream, the apex moment of that particular suffering wife cliché. But, she’s remarkably low key in a lot of the movie. She has a kind of a patient magnetism, drawing the camera in without ever particularly craving it. Radiating movie star glamour without the accompanying narcissism. It's a performance that the film really needs for it to work. A grounded, human, casual quality to balance the theatrical neuroses of Nash. I still really dug it, I mean she’s not gonna rival the top winners in Supporting Actress but I don’t hate this win at all. And GOD, the camera loves her.
9. If there were a mathematical formula to express the percentage of the film that Russell Crowe spends peering intently through crazily squinted eyes, I’d have to borrow a line from another film *deeply* about math and say: The limit does not exist.
10. Nothing screamed 2001 like the closing credits coming up and my ears being greeted by the vocal stylings of the stunningly breathy old lady child soprano that was Charlotte Church. Miss her.
Overall, did I find the film to be a bit overly clever and convenient? Sure.
Did I have issue with the structure and the way it frames a large part of this story really about mental illness into a kind of Sixth Sense style psychological thriller? Yeah kinda.
Did I actually want to know a little bit more about the math so we had a better connection to and understanding about just why he’s so genius? I’m shocked I’m saying this, but yeah I kinda wanted more math.
But in the end, it still feels like a very comforting bowl of soup to me. For the kind of movie they’re making, it's well done, Howard directs with an assured hand and air of confidence. It looks great, the score slams, the performances are uniformly strong, and for the time and world we were living in then, I still really get why it's a Best Picture winner. Does it hold up today? It’s hard to say. For me, it's so intimately connected to a time when I was finding my voice, defining my taste, and falling head over heels with film. I’m proud to have it be a little hetero corner of my film identity and I think it probably won’t be so long till I watch it again. Like John Nash, we all walk around with the ghosts of our past and I’m glad I paid attention to this one again after so long. But for now, time for my weekly watch of a REAL film: Unfaithful.
A Beautiful Mind is now streaming on Hulu. Do you have a movie like A Beautiful Mind that you love more than it, perhaps, deserves?
Reader Comments (8)
Well, this was fascinating... I was about the same age, maybe a touch younger, when this movie was released and I saw about six months before my parents told me I had been diagnosed on the autism spectrum (back then it was called Asperger's Syndrome), and since I was already obsessed with movies back then, my parents were preparing me by showing me films about neurodivergent people (I'd recently seen Rain Man and Forrest Gump for the first time as well)... I also considered this one of my favorite films.
I rewatched it about three years ago, and, while I get the problems with framing a good portion of the story as a Sixth Sense-style thriller, I actually feel these are the strongest moments in the film. Ron Howard has always been at his best when tackling genre, so I feel like the more thriller-like sections work best, while the biopic sections drag it down quite a bit. It's also because I think Paul Bettany gives the best performance in the film (and I therefore find a lot of the third act quite sad).
Still, thank you for the new appreciation of Jennifer Connelly's performance (I never understood how she became such a runaway favorite for the Oscars that year)... Funny story, at the time I did know who Christopher Plummer was, but it was because I knew he was Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, so for me it was interesting to see what he looked like as an old man (even if I think he was wasted in the role).
Oh, and you're absolutely right about the score, it's one of James Horner's masterpieces.
At the time my fellow high school students were all talking about Moulin Rouge and Chicago and wanted to do them for the school musical- I went to Catholic school so there was no way that was happening. I saw bits and pieces of the movie in clips on award shows and occasionally on TV but only recently watched the whole thing in one sitting for the smackdown recently. I do think I enjoyed Connelly's performance more than most- I think she was ranked last in the smackdown- but I remember really being soured on the implied message that if you just really try hard enough you can overcome your mental illness by willpower alone and just ignore other medical advice. I thought that seemed dangerous, especially since my friend's ex stopped taking his medication and attacked him. The ex was a lovely person, but thought he could do without the medicine, despite what his doctors and loved ones told him.
Didn't like the film then when it came out. Still don't like it. Plus, I can't trust a film written by some hack who wrote such awful lines as.... "HI FREEZE!!!!! I'M BATMAN!!!!!!"
Entertaining but wildly over praised and over lauded,Crowe and Connelly have great chemistry,a shame Connelly had to sit in old lady drag at the end with not much to do.
I hate that film. It is all Hollywood and Oscar get wrong in a biopic, in one piece. The obvious 6th Sense rip-off structure, only adds salt to the injury... remember, 2001 was the year of...
Mulholland Drive
Moulin Rouge!
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Gosford Park
The Devil's Backbone
Zhang Yimou's Hero (but it would compete on 2004's Oscars)
... and they chose this?
But we all agree Connelly won because she was snubbed for Requiem for a Dream the year before, right?
Paranoid -- i do not agree (though obviously she was amazing in Requiem). I think the academy didn't like Requiem so it was entirely this film that did it for her. it's exactly what they used to like with supporting women: longsuffering spouse, practically a lead, saintly.
This feels like one of those classic Best Picture wins, where we might not think much of the film today, but it's entertaining and every thing about it works. I think that's a lot better than other winners, and it's really easy to care for the characters.
I will say, though, that while I get why this is in your hetero corner, this is still a film with a strong, suffering, Best Supporting Actress winner looking great, Baby Bettany, and Russel Crowe at the absolute peak of his hotness playing a thinking man.