Beautiful Mind

Ron Howard's 2001 film A Beautiful Mind caused as much controversy over its treatment of mental illness as it did over its winning the Academy Award for best picture. Based on Sylvia Nassar's book of the same name, A Beautiful Mind chronicles the life of a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia, one of the most little-understood mental diseases. While the film may not have deserved the overwhelming cinematic accolades it received, it is nevertheless a touching and sensitive, as well as poignantly realistic portrayal of mental illness. A well-respected Princeton-educated mathematician at the head of his field, John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) is no ordinary man to begin with. His theories arise in his "beautiful mind" like a musician's composition would, and like many brilliant individuals, Nash would have been eccentric with or without the accompaniment of schizophrenic delusions and paranoia. However, when he begins...
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