Film Review | A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Mind over Matter

By Thomas Delapa


A Beautiful Mind is a beautifully shot drama about the mental workings of a schizophrenic. Amazingly, the mind in question belonged to John Forbes Nash, the 1994 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics.

The tricky biopic that emerges from director Ron Howard and writer Akiva Goldsman is one that chillingly goes inside the head of its subject. Not literally, of course. Your own head may be spinning while you're watching the bizarre events unfold. Was Nash was really a paranoid schizophrenic, or was Cold War America of the 1950s slightly crazy? "Yes" may be the answer to both questions.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as Nash, who in 1947 entered Princeton University with a bright future. Withdrawn and arrogant, Nash was obsessed to formulate an original math theory as a way to distinguish himself from his preppy colleagues. Nash was also brilliant at deciphering codes, a talent that is quickly put to use by the Pentagon.

Your opinion of A Beautiful Mind will rest on whether you mind being manipulated, perhaps even deceived, by the filmmakers. As the 1950s pass, Nash is drawn further and further into the top-secret Cold War assignments given to him by a sinister G-man (Ed Harris). However hush-hush, Nash's government work seems believable given the exploding Cold War tensions of the times.

Howard and Goldsman aren't especially forthcoming with the facts, sacrificing "reality" in order to increase the mystery and suspense. But the suspense they create has all the logic and internal perfection of a Newtonian formula.
I found Crowe's performance, while painstaking, to be mannered and overly technical. More naturalistic is his striking co-star Jennifer Connelly, playing the M.I.T. student who becomes his steadfast wife.

In the equation that adds up to A Beautiful Mind, two shining parts are the art design (by Wynn Thomas) and the cinematography (by Roger Deakins). In an amusing demonstration of Nash's "game theory," we scientifically witness how single males compete for an attractive female in a bar. Later, the sight of Nash's office and garage plastered with magazines—part of his decoding work—is creepy.

I wish Howard and Goldsman would have devoted more time to Nash's important mathematical work. After all, were it not for his published theories, he would have probably been just another anonymous academic afflicted with mental disease.

A schizophrenic, says Nash, is someone who "doesn't know what's true." Given the subterfuge, delusions and paranoia of the Cold War era, that diagnosis could have easily been applied to millions of normal Americans.

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[A Beautiful Mind was winner of the 2001 Academy Award for Best Picture.]

Originally published in Boulder Weekly, 12/27/01

Film Review | Robin Hood (2010)

Robin N the Hood

by Thomas Delapa


Pray tell, I don’t know why Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe thought the world needed another reel Robin Hood, but methinks the director and star figured they could alchemically translate the Oscar-winning gold of Gladiator to not-so-merry medieval England. But if you pay more than a farthing for this bust, it’s highway robbery.

The rip-off begins with Crowe, a native New Zealander playing one of Britain’s greatest legends—and in an impish, Irish-flavored accent. It’s hard to tell who or what Crowe consulted for the role, but it surely wasn’t the kingly Columbia Encyclopedia, which describes the heroic 12th-century wealth redistributionist as “Manly, chivalrous, fair, and always ready for a joke.” Crowe may be manly, but he’s more surly than chivalrous, and it’s fair to say that he’s as funny as a medieval tax collector. This is one dull blade.

Audiences expecting a tongue-in-cheek romp or a rousing adventure will also feel cheated. Scott bends over backwards to fashion a handsome and grimly realistic historical saga adorned in pageantry and pretense, knitted together with a classical, choral-intoned score. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland pours in enough back story—starting with Richard the Lionhearted’s battles in France—to fill the English Channel. But this isn’t Shakespeare, mate. Didn’t anyone tell the great Scott that Robin Hood was a mythical figure? Even Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack got that when they made Robin and the Seven Hoods.

You won’t find Sammy Davis Jr. or any other cool cats in the supporting cast, but you will get a band of no-names among such errant stars as Cate Blanchett. Crowe has more chemistry with his horse than he does with the gaunt Blanchett, whose days playing young maids (Marion or otherwise) are behind her.

While Robin Hood is robbed of a compelling romantic angle, its villains are as cheap as they come. With the inglorious death of Richard (Danny Huston) in France, John (Oscar Isaac) slinks to the throne, tossing juvenile tantrums when he isn’t issuing royal edicts to increase taxes on his fed-up subjects. Behind the scenes lurks a weasely, scar-faced traitor (Mark Strong) who’s plotting with the hated French to invade England. Treated like a cast-off, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen) is not even introduced until the third act. A shabby lot, Robin Hood’s band of merry men are only merry when they’re cavorting with lusty wenches.

While this Robin Hood plunders its legendary hero (badly), it also panders to today’s anti-tax crusades brewing throughout the realms on the both sides of the pond. John’s tyrannical demands for more money to “pay for foreign adventures” are met by subjects as mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore. Yet at the same time Scott and company pay lip service to democracy and equality, they barely mutter the tale’s original populist themes of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. They slickly parry the tricky double-edged sword: Nay, this Robin Hood is a crusading libertarian, not a thieving socialist.

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