Posted by Noa on January 8, 2002, at 18:20:20
In reply to Re: A Beautiful Mind - movie and book, posted by bob on January 4, 2002, at 23:56:58
[WARNING: ABM is a good movie, I recommend it, BUT it might spoil it for you if you haven't seen the movie and want to see the movie, if you read what follows]
Bob, I had a bit of a problem with that part too--he chooses not to go back in hospital, and had been off meds, totally tormented by his demons, and then somehow, through the love of his wife, he tames his demons, although, as you said, at the end, he refers to taking newer antipsychotics. Like you, I wondered about the intervening years--had he been off meds until the newer meds appeared on the scene? Was he able to tame his demons through the "power of love"? Or were they tormenting him until he started the newer meds?
Until the scene where he refuses to go back into the hospital, and his wife pledges to help him through with love, they pretty much had me engrossed in the story. But that scene came too suddently on the heels of the one where she goes wild with sexual frustration and also talks to the colleague about thinking of leaving him. I just couldn't buy her committment to him at that point, which would have helped me believe that maybe he was able to manage with her support (still something of a stretch, though).
Also, immediately prior to that scene, when the doctor reappears, I had difficulty with the logistics of it. Dr. Rosen was his doctor when he was in Cambridge, MA, working out of the "McArthur" hospital near Boston. Then, in the crisis scene, his wife calls Rosen and he somehow appears in Princeton. Did he fly down? Did Nash really not have a doctor following him in Princeton after his move there from Massachusetts? Or was this sloppy filmmaking? In any case, it was one of those inconsistencies that has the power to break the "trance" for me. Before the inconsistency appeared, I was able to let myself be absorbed by the story, now the trance was broken and I was no longer "in" the story, and it was an interruption in my ability to be engrossed, to go with the flow.
Another inconsistency that had that effect was the variable make-up work. Nash's make up artist was quite good--I believed the aging process. But Alicia's make up was not always so good. There were decades when she looked late 30's to his late 50's, while earlier and later in the story there was not, apparently, such a big age differential. Again, maybe not a big deal, but it's the kind of little inconsistency that breaks the movie trance in an otherwise good film.
Another thing I found myself wondering about--and why I now need to read the book--is how true to the real story did the movie stay in terms of the nature of his delusions and hallucinations? I kept thinking about how rare visual hallucinations usually are, but then was thinking about how he probably is very much a visual thinker, and that his mind is not a typical one.
I thought Russell Crowe did a fantastic job of acting the part. I especially felt the scenes where he tries to evade and ward off the hallucinations seemed realistic--the mannerisms seemed real, the speech patterns, etc. At least from my limited experience observing/interacting with the all-too many homeless mentally ill people I've encountered on city streets. In many ways, I felt his performance helped me see beyond these ways of behaving. I also liked the way they dealt with his one episode of violence--his conflict seemed believable to me, and I also found his epiphany -about why the hallucinations couldn't be real- was plausible to me, especially given his logical mind.
[OK, if you are reading this post and you haven't seen the movie yet and would like to see the movie, that wasn't such a good idea, but REALLY now is the time to stop reading. I've given away a lot already, but it just might ruin your moviegoing experience if you read the rest of this message]
And, I really was pulled into the delusional system. I thought that part was very well done! I was totally taken. I thought that, while some aspects of it were his paranoia, etc., that his paranoia was somehow a result of some of these events being real, and that the nature of the business he was in made it plausible that he would be involved in some cloak-and-dagger work, and that kind of work could easily induce paranoia, or at least trigger it in a susceptible person, and that we were seeing it develop, rather than seeing it already full blown.
poster:Noa
thread:16098
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020102/msgs/16484.html