A Beautiful Mind
![Updated by an Infoplease Editor on June 26, 2020](/themes/ip/images/info-circle.png)
Director: | Ron Howard |
Writer: | Akiva Goldsman |
Universal Pictures; PG-13; 129 minutes | |
Release: | 12/01 |
Cast: | Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris |
A Beautiful Mind tells the incredible story of John Forbes Nash, Jr. This mathematician had prodigious beginnings, early success in career and marriage, and then spiraled into a sad decline of paranoid schizophrenia. Amazingly, the story doesn't end there: decades later Nash emerged from his illness to regain control of his life. The film is based on a biography by Sylvia Nasar (which tells the true story with considerably more detail than the fairly fictitious film version).
Caveats aside, A Beautiful Mind spins a visually astute yarn around difficult-to-film subjects (complex math, madness). Crowe holds it together like the master actor he is, although director Ron Howard deserves credit for transforming a non-visual book into an eminently watchable film.