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Saturday, November 15, 2008

A Beautiful Mind - The Movie

I won't talk about the starcast, the acting, the picturization etc. there things are just superb!!! those are what the oscar was for :)

I am just getting curious(I really can not hold myself on to write about this movie) to talk about the content. As a summary, the movie is about some disease, which forces the brain to think about unreal things and believe them as real. That unreal can be anything, be something living, non-living, some situation; means anything that can happen to. And moreover the person in the context is very good at numbers, he is a mathematician. He can deal with complex things so his problems are also supposed to be complex :)

Movie starts at Princeton university, where a new batch of PHD students have come by Carnegie's scholarship. Among them, one is our subject, John Nash. He is extremely good in maths, who only thinks in terms of mathematical expressions, can figure out mistakes in others papers, but is unable to find a subject for himself to write thesis about because he wants to write his thesis on some original idea which strike the economic balance in the world economy, the governing dynamics. He has so much belief in his mathematical ability that he can not even take his defeat as he infers that the game itself is wrong. 

He does not have many friends or a social circle because he thinks that people do not like him. He does not believe classes or books, they will destroy the potential for authentic creativity.  His roommate, Charles, is a very humorous kind of person. After some struggles he was able to write his mathematical thesis on his desired subject. And gets his placement at the desired place, the wheeler labs. He gets into some blues withe the defence and the enemies(Russian agents this time).

After few years of work at wheeler labs, he has shown at pentagon, breaking some encrypted code with his mathematical ability. After being successful in first assignment at pentagon, he is contacted by some person from the defence. During his lectures at university he gets a practical lesson from a girl student that their could be multiple ways so solving a given problem. He again tries to link it with multi variable calculus. During the course of time, he goes along with the defence(with William) and keep helping them by breaking codes. Time passes, few things happen and he gets married to the same girl.

One day he gets arrested by some people and taken to a pschycatric hospital. His wife was informed by doctor that since after completing his graduation he was suffering from a disease called "". In this disease, the person goes into the imaginary world and start believing in unreal things. schizophrenia, people with this disorder are often paranoid. Doctors and his wife found  that his friend Charles and Mr William are unreal. All the time he has been trying to get out something very secret from the magazines but all unreal array of situations. These things are only in his mind, he is sick. Doctors  start the treatment, insulin shocks for 5 days a week, unto 10 weeks.

His wife gets a baby and starts facing the reality bravely. She feels that instead of feeling angry or guilty, she is still able to see the same John whom she loved and when she feel that she again start loving him. This keeps get her going. At home John starts recovering, but he leaves the medications because of some reasons and again start seeing the unreal friend, friend's nephew and defence man, Mr. William. One day due to his unreal considerations he becomes a threat to their own baby. Her wife calls the doctor again. Doctor suggests to take him to the hospital again and start the full course of treatment again. He denies and decides to fight with his own mind by his will(power). Suddenly he notices that the girl never gets old and asserts it as unreal. His wife decides to stay with him and sends the baby to her mother's house.

He understands one thing that delusions are their in his mind and if he understands this and makes this concrete than he can just ignore them, let them be there and keep living the way it is. As a trial to become normal, he starts to go university again, there his unreal mind takes him over and he becomes a scene. He is again and again threatened and chased by the unreal, imaginary, his mind created things. But, with the passage of time he strongly develops the faculty of watching them objectively. If they try to take you over then ignore them strongly but do not react much. After getting defeated again and again he does not loose and keep trying, of course his wife was always there to support him. She does not let him loose the heart and the mantle battle too. Finally he is able to tell his unreal friends that he is not going to talk to them any more.

He gets his first lecture and a lots of praise too. The unreal friends still do exist but they are just there, they are not able to affect him, as he is not paying attention to them and not reacting to them. The dialogues between John and his real friend are quite meaningful here. He is old now is considerably able to mix up in the university and becomes famous within the students. At this moment of time he is nominated with noble prize for his theory of equilibrium. I am quoting some dialogues among John and the person who invites him, "I still see the things which are not here but I just choose not to acknowledge, like my appetite I choose not to feed my mind for certain things."

Now the speech at Nobel prize ceremony, "I have always believed in numbers, in equations, in logic's that lead to reason but after a lifetime of such pursuits  I ask what truly is logic who decides its reason, my quest has taken me to the physical, metaphysical, the delusional and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most discovery of my life, it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found."

The movie ends.

The movie symbolizes some illusions that keep haunting people through-out their lives. Whenever you do right so many things from internal start to stop you. So many things from external, the society, start to stop you.

But, I am little bit confused about the title of the movie "A Beautiful Mind". Could it be because everyone(rather every one's mind) has some kind of illusions, but only some of them are able to figure that out and only few of them are able to live with them, honestly.
(Probably this is turning out to be the limitation of language to not being able to express the views)

Later on I realized about some of the prejudices of my own mind. Few times I myself was under prejudices that he(John) was right and the scene on the screen does not have the actual meaning, but later on I found that the scene had a very clear meaning as it was shown.


Whenever you do right so many things from internal start to stop you. so many things from external, the society, start to stop you.