A Beautiful Mind Review
A Beautiful Mind tells the life story of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who struggled through most of his adult life with schizophrenia. Directed by Ron Howard, this becomes a tale not only of one man's battle to overcome his own disability, but of the overreaching power of love - a theme that has been shown by many films that I enjoy.
A Beautiful Mind may have been developed to be a crowd-pleaser as well as a tear-jerker, because you know this is a man’s life without falsities. It is blatant and true, that’s all. This film proves that there are still instances when Hollywood-produced, big budget movies are worth a viewer's investment of time and money.
A Beautiful Mind tells the true story of Professor John Nash (Russell Crowe), but, while the gross facts may be accurate, one must expect embellishment of the details. It first shows Nash as a student at Princeton in 1947. He is brilliant but erratic - a mathematical genius who lacks social skills. He is aided in making it through those difficult years by his roommate, Charles. Years later, following an astounding breakthrough that revolutionizes economics, John is teaching at M.I.T. and doing code-breaking work for a shady government agent, William Parcher (Ed Harris). It's at this time that John meets, falls in love with, and marries Alicia (Jennifer Connelly). But his happy world soon starts to crumble.
John is afflicted with paranoid hallucinations; by the time he is taken to a mental hospital under the care of the mysterious Dr. Rosen, he is diagnosed as having an advanced case of schizophrenia.
Russell Crowe won the 2000 Best Actor Oscar for Gladiator, and in this movie, he doesn’t give anything less of a great performance. Crowe successfully buries his personality beneath Nash's, allowing the character to come alive and for the audience to see inside his mind. And, when it comes to the sequences showing Nash battling his demons, Crowe's performance is convincing. At the same time, Jennifer Connelly is wonderful as Alicia. She does well depicting a woman torn by love for and fear of the same man.
The movie tosses mathematical theories and theorems in the audience's direction, but explains them simply and lucidly; so I was never lost or bored. A Beautiful Mind isn't about mathematics except as a symbol. It's about human frailty and the ability to triumph over it.
Through John's interference he turned what was considered a minor case of a chemical imbalance into to full blown schizophrenia. During the turn of the century, which is when this story took place, what scientists knew of the human mind wouldn't fill the inside of a matchbook. This was for certain the case when it was a woman who was the patient. If there was any deviation in the accepted behavior of a woman as deemed by society, the woman was considered hysterical. When dealing with these patients, instead of seriously considering the consequences of their actions, they went along with obscenely stupid notions on how to deal with problems of the mind.
The adult John comes to civilized society as an experiment by Marx and Mond to see how a "savage" would adapt to civilization. Frankly, he does not adapt very well. He is appalled by the lifestyle and ideas of civilized people, and gets himself into a lot of trouble by denouncing civilization. He loves Lenina very much, but gets very upset at her when she wants to have sex with him. He physically attacks her, and from that point on does not want to have anything to do with her. When his mother dies, he interferes with the "death conditioning" of children by being sad. Finally, his frustrations with the civilized world become too much for him and he decides to take action. He tries to be a sort of a Messiah to a group of Deltas, trying to free them from the effect of soma. He tells them only the truth, but it is not the truth that the Deltas have been conditioned to believe, so to them it is a violent lie and they begin to cause a riot. When the riot is subdued, John is apprehended and taken to have a talk with Mustapha Mond.
?Life Is Beautiful? gives the audience a vivid look into what happened during the Holocaust. Roberto Benigni plays a very upbeat, carefree bookstore owner. His wife, who is not Jewish, and his son are forced into a concentration camp. They are deported on a train with many other Jews. From the point the get to the camp, Benigni shows the audience what it was like for the Jews. During selection, his wife is separated from him and his son, along with his uncle. The movie shows the Jews working where there are hot furnaces having to haul around heavy objects all day. It also shows the German?s being cruel in a verbal way to the Jews. At one point in the movie, Benigni returns late to his bunk where his son is waiting. Another man in the bunk informs Benigni that everyone was nervous he would not return. This shows the fear that the Jews had to live with every day while they were contained in the concentration camps. This would be good ...
In your view, how does Welles’ portrayal of the complex nature of happiness contribute to the enduring value of Citizen Kane?
Throughout the history in the article “Early in U.S. history, children who broke the law were treated the same as adult criminals” (1999) that was written by the Bulletin: Juvenile Justice, explains around the nineteenth century, young children at age seven who are accused for a dishonest behavior were to be imprisoned either with the adult or sentenced to death if found guilty on stand trial in criminal court offenses (1999).
Deborah Hastings of The Associated Press wrote “Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to series of recent surveys.” (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-07-exepensive-to-execute_N.htm). In an article Richard C. Dieter, Esq. Executive Director said “The high price of the death penalty is often most keenly felt in those counties responsible for both the prosecution and defense of capital defendants. A single trial can mean near bankruptcy, tax increases, and the laying off of vital personnel. Trials costing a small county $100,000 from unbudgeted funds are common and some officials have even gone to jail in resisting payment.”(http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/millions-misspent 19940). Capital punishment doesn’t fix any problems, all it does is cost the government more money. If the death penalty was abolished completely our government would save more money just by sentencing life in prison without
Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck star in this mystery/thriller that dabbles in psycho-analysis and the troubles of the mind. Constance Peterson is a renowned psycho-analyst, whose ability to analyze data is unquestionable, but who has no life outside of her work. This all changes the day the new Chief of Staff, Dr. Edwardes (Peck) arrives. It is love at first site, and Constance’s barriers break down in a flash.
Federal standards define any young offender under the age of eighteen who commits a crime is define as a juvenile delinquent. And the important differences between adults and young people, that a one-size fits all method is not desirable and will not make the situation better. Our justice system also accomplishes an important symbolic function by establishing principles of behavior. It formally defines the right and wrong for citizens and frees them from the responsibility of taking vengeance, thus avoiding the escalation of feuds within communities. The system protects the rights of free citizens by honoring the belief that individual freedom should not be denied without good cause.
...ssion and intrusiveness. John’s lack of having an open mind to his wife’s thoughts and opinions and his constant childish like treatment of his wife somehow emphasizes this point, although, this may not have been his intention. The narrator felt strongly that her thoughts and feelings were being disregarded and ignored as stated by the narrator “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (Gilman 115), and she shows her despise of her husband giving extra care to what he considers more important cases over his wife’s case with a sarcastic notion “I am glad my case is not serious!” (Gilman 115). It is very doubtful that John is the villain of the story, his good intentions towards doing everything practical and possible to help his wife gain her strength and wellbeing is clear throughout the story.
Cigarettes have become a national icon, as big as the likes of cooperating giants such as Coca-Cola, as people are familiar with the idea of smoking from such a young age, becoming so addicted and subservient to seeing the act as normalcy in modern day America. Therefore certain solutions are needed to, at the very least, help make this icon less harmful to this country’s health. Both online articles, “Are Herbal and ‘Natural’ Cigarettes Safer?” by Ennis Thompson Jr.’s and “Marlboro Introduces Vitamin-Infused Cigarettes” by The Daily Currant argue that the so called “healthy” or “natural” cigarettes actually have a few health benefits and are only just a way to slow down the dangers of smoking. The Daily Currant makes a valid argument through
Treating juveniles as a separate class in the criminal justice system did not exist until the late nineteenth century. Juveniles were grouped with all other violators of law within the nation’s courts. Along with rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and social change that shocked our society came the necessary reforms to the criminal law system that saw things like probation, parole, undetermined sentences, and most importantly for the subject at hand, the juvenile court system. Recognizing the need for different type of solution, states began to adopt “open-ended, ...
Life in prison without the possibility of parole offers satisfaction to victims and their loved ones. The death penalty is a very lengthy process and can take years to reach a verdict, which causes more distress to effected families. Michael J. Wilkins, a state supreme court justice, has had history with the death penalty and says, “Based on our experience, a sentence of life without parole may be less expensive to the state, more miserable for the guilty, and more certain for the victims and society.” Life in prison without parole is considered a sentence to death in incarceration. Life in prison without parole is actually a cheaper route for the tax payer, where judicial cases without the death penalty costs tax payers $740,000, meanwhile judicial cases there the death penalty is used costs tax payers $1,260,000. If we stopped practicing the death penalty, we could fund extra hundreds of millions of dollars into services that need it more. The death penalty essentially costs too much and delivers nothing, while life in prison without parole is a severe and solid
John role in Brave New World, is an important one, in that he is of the only characters to clearly articulate the atrocities of this society; how no one is truthfully happy, knows what love is, or is fully aware of their situation. And it is this realization of the world around him that eventually drives him into insanity. Everything from his mother’s eventual death, to his inability to control his lust, causes him to lose hope. Throughout the novel, John struggles to fit into society, but because he had never been brought up under the conditions of the World State, he was not able to assimilate. John’s strengths are his intelligence and determination, but his downfall’s are his s...
The movie accurately portrays the nature of schizophrenia using John Nash as a perfect example, who exhibits many of the key symptoms of the disease. An inability to communicate is one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia, one which takes its toll on interpersonal relationships and intimacy. The movie does an excellent job showing the problems that Alicia had as she tries to help her husband seek treatment and recover from the disease. A Beautiful Mind directly shows a medical definition of schizophrenia. Nash exhibits many of the key symptoms of the disease: hallucinations (he has a roommates but he lives in a single dorm room), delusions (thinks he works for the government), ideas of reference, poor social skills (mumbles, doesn’t talk much to strangers), awkward gestures and facial expressions, and jumbled speech. I do, however, feel it is impossible for a film to convey the exact experience of a schizophrenic or to cover all the elements of the illness.
Tobacco has been used, enjoyed, and abused around the world for centuries. Originally tobacco was produced for pipe smoking and chewing (chewing tobacco). The first cigarette was made around the 1600’s, but didn’t become popular in America until the end of the Civil War. The invention of the Cigarette rolling machine in 1883 sparked a tremendous surge of production and sales of cigarettes around the world. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that health risks from long-term tobacco use became a real issue in the world. In 1966 the American Surgeon General demanded warning labels be put on cigarette cartons warning users the possible health risks associated with tobacco use. Tobacco use has been a growing epidemic in the United