PRODUCTION: USA 2001
DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
STARRING: Russell Crowe (John Nash), Jennifer Connelly (Alicia Nash), Paul Bettany (Charles), Ed Harris (William Parcher), Christopher Plummer (Dr Rosen)
SYNOPSIS
A Beautiful Mind is a biographical film, loosely based on Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 biography of the mathematician John Nash, winner of a Nobel prize in 1994.
The story begins at Princeton in 1947 when Nash arrives as a graduate student. Nash prefers to study alone and only enjoys the company of Charles, his roommate. One day, invited by his classmates to join them in a bar, he has the intuition that will lead him to the writing of his paper on Game Theory.
While teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is asked to work for the Pentagon. William Parcher, a high-level agent of the Department of Defense, asks him to decrypt coded Russian communication. He has to leave the deciphered codes in a box.
One day, during a lecture at Harvard University, he sees Charles and Russian agents among the audience and flees terrified.
He is sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility where the doctors tell his wife that he suffers from schizophrenia and that Charles and Parcher only exist in his mind.
Nash has now to find a way to live with his illness. He still continues to see Charles and Parcher, but decides not to interact with them. He faces the demon of his illness and after many years he can go back to teaching and win a Nobel Prize.
BEFORE VIEWING
9. Answer the questions.
1. What mental illness do you think John Nash suffered from? Read the synopsis to check your answer.
2. Use the internet to find out what Game Theory is.
3. Use the internet to find more information on Nash’s career achievements and his fight against his mental disorder.
