 |
Entertainment > Movies >
(on Wikipedia)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/
https://www.abeautifulmind.com/
Based on the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., the nobel prize winning mathematician, this film explores his life, genius and madness.
Media which explore intelligence, its quirks and consequences are (obviously) rarer than the geniuses themselves. That this movie has appealed to a broad audience, helping embrace and enlighten more typical people, is rarer still. This movie is very strongly recommended.
-
Inspired by A Beautiful Mind (book) (1998), an unauthorized biography of Nash.
The main takeaway, aside from the “other side of genius” is that genius itself can be wielded against its own quirks and consequences. This is missing from Mr. Robot – (2015 show), which has a similarly-atypical main character and is the primary reason I dislike that show.
A Beautiful Mind has no boring bits for me. Its lead character is interesting, and Russell Crowe‘s acting is phenomenal.
I’m unsure what else I could or should say about this film. It can be unsettling to be reminded that some humans are “naturally gifted”, and perhaps further off-putting to also learn not just about just how alien their perspective can be but about how difficult it is.
People are not born equal, and some have difficulty with that. The typical have a kind of jealousy of the biologically-specialized, seeing their talents as being gifts without their own effort of training and practice.
However, people see one another’s surfaces only. We see the use of skills and their efficacy. We don’t know the sacrifices taken or difficulties in having or using those skills.
We think of others are “smart” and “stupid”. It is as though there can be a graph of people, with those two halves. Most people are in the middle, making a bell shape.
However, it is not like that at all. We all have likes and dislikes, skills and interests. We are all dumb about some things some of the time. There isn’t even consistency. We also change over time.
Seeing the “sides” of someone, like that of a genius, and how they can fall not just on the genius side of the curve but is somehow simultaneously on the opposite side is a very useful reminder that everyone is a unique blend and nobody is just a point plotted on that “smartness graph”.
