The Big Whatsit

Year: 2001

Total Oscar Haul: Four

Oscar Nominees: Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge

Worthy Outsiders: Amelie, Donnie Darko, Shrek, Monsters Inc., Black Hawk Down, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Ghost World, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums, Mulholland Drive

Tagline: He saw the world in a way no one could have imagined

Tasting Notes: I admit I was astonished by A Beautiful Mind the first time I saw it. The plot seemed to revolve around this nice yet eccentric maths genius who was getting more embroiled in the world of international espionage. And then, more than an hour into the film, it turns completely upside down and starts telling an entirely different story. Challenging all the build-up of its first act, A Beautiful Mind stops being a thriller with an unlikely hero, and turns into a battle for the soul.

It’s only with a second viewing that the movie begins to fall apart. For a start, there’s the degree of license it takes with the facts, the extent to which it can honestly say it’s based on a true story. Here’s the ‘true’ part - yes, there’s a mathematician called John Nash, he does indeed suffer from schizophrenia, and is married to Alicia. And, er, that’s it. You don’t have to spend long looking into Nash’s background to see that Ron Howard and his writers took huge liberties with Nash’s life story in coming up with a sanitised version for Hollywood. Its biggest crime is that it portrays Nash’s schizophrenia as a hallucinatory condition whereby he sees and talks to imaginary people regularly. This is great in terms of the dramatic impact it makes when you realise some of his closest colleagues and friends are products of his imagination. However, Nash only suffered from auditory hallucinations. The rest was all made up for effect.

Secondly, biographical information about Nash shows him to be far from the tortured hero played by Russell Crowe. In reality, he was difficult, spiteful and prone to bouts of cruelty. His relationship with Alicia suffered a number of ups and downs, far from the cosy image presented at the end of A Beautiful Mind. As it goes, Crowe does a reasonable job with the material. He may be difficult to like whenever he appears off the screen, but Crowe can act, and embues Nash with a great deal of sympathy. Jennifer Connelly in the role of Alicia doesn’t have an awful lot to do. When she’s not looking worried, she’s getting upset, and apparently that was enough to hand her the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar. I quite liked Paul Bettany, who puts in a winning performance as Crowe’s ‘prodigal roommate,’ whilst Ed Harris is reliably shady as a cloak and dagger government agent.

As entertainment, A Beautiful Mind isn’t bad. It’s made by the numbers. Ron Howard has always appeared to me to be a fairly pedestrian director, regardless of what he has to work with, meaning you get few genuine moments of inspiration, and here things are no different. Once the big ‘reveal’ has been opened, the remainder of the film is made up of Nash’s slow rehabiliation back into society, his battles against adversity as he has to fight both his personal demons and the prejudices of those around him. James Horner uses a choir of gothic voices to rise and fall in pitch along with every success and pitfall in our hero’s life, yet it’s always clear that he will turn out okay. That adds up to half a movie during which the tension has all been sucked out, and what we’re actually seeing is an extended climax.

Much like the stuff going on in Nash’s brain, it just isn’t true. What really stings about this movie is that Nash’s story is interesting enough to make for a damn fine picture that remains faithful to the facts. But that didn’t happen. Writer Akiva Goldsman came up with a yarn that could be spoonfed to audiences whilst going for cheap dramatic effects. A Beautiful Mind should have been treated with some degree of caution, or at the very least as a competent feature that was based far more on easily digestible fiction than actual events. As it turned out, the Academy swallowed it whole, and Goldsman picked up his Oscar, as did Howard, and the film romped home.

Was it the year’s best? God, no. The first instalment of Peter Jackson’s Rings trilogy remains a classic in my eyes, of course, and I enjoyed Gosford Park immensely. But look at that list of worthy outsiders! 2001 produced some incredibly imaginative movies, the sort of intelligent, witty and occasionally challenging material that will stay with me far longer than this. Monsters Inc. is still my favourite Pixar, an amazing tour de force of imagination and gorgeous graphics. Then there are indie classics like Ghost World and Donnie Darko, beautiful French film Amelie, a decidedly noirish Coen Brothers effort in The Man Who Wasn’t There (aka The Film That Was Their Last Good One), and the immense Memento, the one that launched Christopher Nolan and made far better use of its central psychological condition than A Beautiful Mind could ever have hoped to.

The Mmmm Oscar goes to: Personally, out of all the films mentioned, I still hold Donnie Darko in a higher regard than it perhaps deserves. Maybe that’s because it’s cool. More likely, it’s the kind of film I can watch again and again, and find a new angle to focus on with every sitting. An honourable mention must also go to Memento, the low budget thriller that made such inventive use of the passage of time. In an Academy-friendly environment though, I must err towards The Fellowship of the Ring, still the best of the trilogy and a lovely adaptation of a novel that doesn’t lend itself easily to a film treatment.

The Oscar Files verdict: