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?