A Beautiful Mind

Ron Howard well deserved the Oscars he won for Best Picture and Best Director for A BEAUTIFUL MIND and despite the fine body of work he has produced to date this may well stand out as his greatest accomplishment. The story of the brilliant mathematician John Nash's descent into a schizophrenic nightmare and recovery is both heart wrenching and warming at the same time, it's just a shame it isn't entirely true. Then again, if Akiva Goldsman had stuck to the truth as laid out in Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash we would have had lots of nice European footage and Ed Harris would have been playing an alien instead of a government spook! As it is, Goldsman works true magic with the way he adapts the elements of Nash's life into just over two hours and under the watchful eye of Howard we see a genuis of film making comparable to that of Nash's work with numbers. Russell Crowe simply delivers the performance of a life time and I'm still shocked he didn't take the Oscar for it especially as in my opinion Jennifer Connelly, as fine as her work here was, didn't quite deserve hers. An all around stellar piece of work and it will no doubt hold up fifty years from now. A special mention must be made of James Horner's haunting score and also to the fact this is to my knowledge the only film of Ron's not to have a cameo from brother Clint.