A ‘Beautiful’ Controversy

Posted Friday, January 25, 2002 at 7:45 AM Central

by Heather Koehler

Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind has already taken home three Golden Globe awards and is a shoe-in for multiple Oscar nominations. It’s obviously one great movie, well, at least to the general audience. Now come the “how realistic” critiques.

Mental health experts are either applauding or degrading the reproduction of this brilliant but schizophrenic man’s life. Some feel it depicts the patient’s lives well but gives the idea that pure willpower can overcome the disease. Others see the part where Russell Crowe’s character goes off of his medications and loses control as a message for schizophrenics to stay on their meds. Anyway you slice it, a movie just can’t be a movie.

Even more than the medical controversies are the discrepancy controversies. People who have read Sylvia Nasar’s biography of John Forbes Nash are criticizing screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (who won the Golden Globe for Best Screenwriter) and director Ron Howard for making the movie more “Hollywood” and less real. They are accused of leaving out particular aspects of Nash’s life, like his gay tendencies, his illegitimate child and his divorce from Alicia, even though the couple lived together the entire time and were remarried last June.

The biographer is defending the directors and producers until the end. “It would have been bizarre in the Nash character in the film had been gay because it would have been a terrific departure from the actual fact.” Jennifer Connelly, who portrays Alicia in the movie adds, “Some of the things that I’ve heard people criticize for not being in the film are contested anyway, and there’s no evidence that some of those things are really true. Most importantly, the Nashes are happy with it.”