The Effects of Schizophrenia on the Life and Character of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, a Film by Ron Howard
A Beautiful Mind was a wonderful film about a man, John Nash, victimized by schizophrenia. Nash was a brilliant mathematician, and even with the debilitating illness he was persistent enough to become successful later in life. The change in the character is clear as he first starts out as a cocky young man and later shifts into paranoia driven by hallucinations of Russians sending codes to him in the newspaper.
At first we see his roommate Charles as a real character, we don’t suspect Nash’s schizophrenia. But he soon begins to see patterns where no patterns lie. In the scene where he and Alicia – his wife – were looking at the stars, Nash finds the pattern of any object that she names in the sky. A romantic moment….. until Alicia finds a thousand other patterns he’s ripped up from newspapers, taped all over his office. At this point we start to suspect that something is off with Nash. The moment the schizophrenia is confirmed comes when the movie reveals that Charles and his cute niece are in fact one big hallucination.
The movie has a way of pushing the darkness of the illness under a blanket of love. The devotion that Alicia shows Nash is remarkable and it plays a huge role in Nash’s recovery. She supports him and loves him throughout, sticking by him when he is at his worst. When he refuses to take the pills she molds into his comfort zone and encourages him to interact with society and begin teaching again.
I think the best part of the movie was when Nash finally realized his images of people were not real. This is when he looks at his son, and then looks at the image of the niece, and realizes that the niece never grows older. And although schizophrenia is an incurable disease, when he finally believed that his images were in fact hallucinations, he was able to come to terms with it and take on courses of action.
The movie was absolutely beautiful, and took the audience on a rollercoaster of emotions. It was grotesque, funny, sweet, and tragic. I loved that the movie gave a sense of hope to the word schizophrenia, and though the ending was not ideal, it was more or less a happy one.
