A Beautiful Mind
Directed by Ron Howard
A Beautiful Mind is supposed to
be based on the life of John Nash, but the movie
is mostly lies, as you would expect from Hollywood.
The real John Nash is a brilliant American mathematician
who won the Nobel Prize for economics for his
pioneering work in a mathematical field called
noncooperative game theory. The branch
of mathematics called
Game Theory describes
aspects of human behaviour and was invented
by John von Neumann (The Hungarian mathematician
often regarded as the most intelligent human
being who ever lived) and Oskar Morgenstern.
Does this movie have anything to say on the
subject? Bugger all. Predictably
A Beautiful
Mind doesn't care less about mathematics,
apart from countless daft scenes of Nash scribbling
mathematical symbols on windows. This movie
concentrates on showing a man going mad.
A
Beautiful Mind is Hollywood bullshit
and nothing more.
A Beautiful Mind presents the
usually understated Russel Crow (as Nash) with
the opportunity overact like mad: mugging and
fidgeting as if he had a firework up his backside.
Crow is seriously miscast as Nash. He just doesn't
come across as a boffin with a brilliant mind.
Then there is the curious aberration of his
muscle-bound physique. Recall that Crow featured
in
Gladiator, he
is a muscled to literally Action Hero specifications.
Why would a self-neglecting mathematician who
hardly ate have f***ing great arms thicker in
girth than an average person's thigh and a torso
to put Atlas to shame? Absurd.
Then there is a scene where his fiancee claims
she counted the stars and "got to 4,300
once." She must have used a telescope or
counted many stars twice as there are only 3000
naked eye stars, even in perfect viewing conditions.
And there is a daft scene where she asks some
builders to stop work. See what happens and
ask yourself if the result is plausible. Yer
right.
Most disappointingly there was no insight into
why many love mathematics and of the beauty
of mathematics itself. The movie portrayed the
motive for doing mathematics as mere work, as
a way to achieve success. Wrong. Mathematicians
do maths because they love doing mathematics,
in the same way a writer loves to write. It
is a creative and incredibly rewarding occupation.
OK, mathematical discoveries are astonishingly
useful in the real world too, but such applications
are often a serendipity. Mathematicians love
maths for its own sake.
A Beautiful Mind is blatant sentimental
nonsense. It has no depth. But it is watchable.
Just.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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Why didn't the imaginary flatmate go to
the wedding? In the movie Nash was convinced
he was real. The flatmate would have been
best man, surely! If his wife was as smart
as the film hinted, then why didn't she
notice his best mate - his only real mate
in the world - didn't actually exist?
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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Some insight into Nash's "beautiful mind"
would have been nice.
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