Film #9: A Beautiful Mind (2001)

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Movie #9: A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Oscar wins: 4- Best Picture, Best Director (Howard), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Connelly), Best Adapted Screenplay (Goldsman)
Nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Crowe), Best Editing, Best Make-Up, Best Original Score (James Horner)
Directed by: Ron Howard
Written by: Akiva Goldsman based on the novel by Sylvia Nasar
Starring: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Paul Bettany
Length: 135 minutes
Budget: $60 million

The winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 74th Academy Awards was the film A Beautiful Mind, a true story drama about the life of the brilliant John Forbes Nash, Jr.
 
John Nash (Crowe) is a graduate student at Princeton University. Everyone knows he is a brilliant man, but he doesn't seem to be able to produce the work to back it up. Eventually, his studies lead him to MIT, where he becomes a professor, and meets his future wife, Alicia (Connelly). It is then that things go terribly wrong, and the viewer witnesses problems and eventual collapse of one of the most brilliant minds in history.
 
This film, a Hollywood drama to the core, is filled with great acting performances, from Russell Crowe who recreates John Nash so perfectly, to Connelly as his love interest, Bettany as his friend, and Harris as the tough, hard, crazy stimulus behind Nash's behavior. Also, Ron Howard puts the film together beautifully, with simple yet extravagent shots, and a compelling and insightful script written by Goldsman.
 
Whenever a biography is made, especially about a living person, the people involved go out on a great risk: they face the task of recreating the life of a person, and staying true to who they were and how they lived, while still making it interesting enough for viewers to actually want to see it. This film is the perfect example of a successful biography, one that can tell the story of a man's life, show who he was, while avoiding the dull, history channel-esque plot.
 
In my opinion, the films of the 74th Oscars were (all around) nothing spectacular. A Beautiful Mind was excellent, as was the first installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; but all around, the films seemed to lack anything special. Moulin Rouge! was nominated, and it was a decent musical, but it was certainly nothing special; In the Bedroom was an amazingly compelling drama, that certainly was worthy of a Best Picture nomination, but it was one of those films that no one ever expected to win, because it was good but not "Best Picture" good; and Gosford Park was an interesting but very slow, very bland murder mystery, filled with little-known stars. So, although A Beautiful Mind deserved its victory, 2001 certainly won't be remembered as a year of amazing cinematic work.
 
Nine down, seventy-two to go!
 
 
Rankings:
1. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
2. Chicago (2002)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
4. The Departed (2006)
5. No Country for Old Men (2007)
6. The Hurt Locker (2009)
7. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
8. Crash (2005)
9. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)