The Gladiator, as math professor
You didn't screw off in his class!
Okay, and
now we come to my eighth Russell Crowe movie.
It is far from my favorite, although well worth seeing; I include it here
mostly to demonstrate Crowe’s remarkable breadth as an actor. Who could have believed that Maximus from Gladiator could transform into the
nerdy, tentative, vulnerable schizophrenic mathematician/economist John Nash. Not me, for sure.
The story
behind this movie is mostly true. There was a Nash. He won the Nobel Prize in economics for some theoretical stuff I can’t begin to
understand. He also was plagued by schizophrenia
all his life, but managed to rise above it.
I don’t know
how close to the truth the movie steers in little things. Nash was a Princeton professor. He was married to the same woman, on and off,
for 58 years. He had a son. Beyond that I think the movie strays away
from pure truth, to create an interesting
story. Two of the denizens of Nash's own personal schizophrenic
nightmare (as portrayed in the film), Paul Bettany and Ed Harris, are very
good, as is Jennifer Connelly as Nash’s wife.
Overall, A Beautiful Mind is a weird little piece
of cinematic art, and may not be for everyone, but try it all the same. And keep asking yourself, “can that guy
really be the Gladiator?” B-/C+
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