A Beautiful Mind

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * * )

You can see how they'll note it in the filmgoer's companions in 20 or 30 years: Crowe, Russell — Antipodean actor who won the Oscar for the role in which he didn't need to act, instead of the nominations for which he did.

For, if there are many things to be suspicious of in this airbrushed biopic of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, John Forbes Nash, Crowe's talent is not one of them.

The film professes to portray 50 years of Nash's life, from a 19-year-old arriving at Princeton University in 1947 to distinguished fellow on campus, honoured with the 1994 Nobel Prize for his revolutionary work on games theory, after a battle against paranoid schizophrenia.

Nash was diagnosed in his late-20s and lived for decades in a mental wilderness, helped and protected by his wife, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly).

Director Ron Howard returns to his favourite theme, the triumph of the human spirit against overwhelming odds. You probably don't need reminding that he overlooked minor features of Nash's life, such as his homosexuality, his arrest for soliciting in a public toilet, and that the long-suffering Alicia divorced and remarried him.

For all that, A Beautiful Mind is a fascinating story of a man and a time. On his arrival at Princeton, World War II is becoming history and the Cold War is becoming conflict.

Nash is mesmerised by the charismatic Professor Hellinger (Judd Hirsch), who postulates that mathematicians won the war and that his students' way to greatness is working for the US agencies confronting the Soviet Union. This, of course, offers a better story than two hours of maths geeks chalking calculations on a blackboard.

Nash doesn't fit into the
conventional patterns of his academic peers; his only supporters appear to be his English roommate (Paul Bettany) and the girlfriend he meets with a group of mates in a bar.

Enter Ed Harris as a secret serviceman who convinces the genius that only his cryptographic skills can end the threat of a Soviet invasion.

Just when his life appears to be turning into a John le Carre novel, Nash's condition is exposed and he is detained, put in the hands of a psychiatrist, Dr Rosen (Christopher Plummer), who seems nasty but may be a good guy after all.

You know there'll be a happy ending, and the professor is duly rehabilitated, goes back to work and becomes a beloved figure. Which is not to downplay Nash - he just deserved better.

Rental video, DVD: Today

• DVD feature: movie (129min); commentaries by Howard, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman; deleted scenes; 10 short features; storyboard comparisons; Academy Awards footage; theatrical trailer.