A Beautiful Mind is a compelling and powerful movie that explores the Nobel Laureate winner and professor John Nash in his rise, fall, and recovery dealing with schizophrenia. As the film opens, Nash is a genius level student in 1950s America working on applying to graduate school. He is introduced to his roommate, a tall pale guy names Charles. They have a rough start, but eventually warm up to each other as time goes on. The very first time that I realized something was a bit off about Nash, was the scene directly following this where Nash is challenged by one of his fellow grad students to a game of Hex. Nash loses to Hansen, and throws a terrible fit and storms off like a small child would. Some time passes, and Nash and the group of friends
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A decade or so passes and Nash is now a full-fledged doctor. As he is cracking a mathematical code for the government, he is introduced to a government agent named Parcher, who fights against the Soviets in the cold war. Parcher tells Nash that he wants him to be a code breaker for the government and convinces him to serve his country. Every time Nash cracks a code, he is to deposit it in a mansion that has a special mailbox. Nash accepts and now splits his time between teaching at Princeton and “breaking codes”. He meets Alicia, a student of his and eventual wife, when she approaches him about solving one of his problems that he posed in class. She asks him on a date, and that is the start of their romance. Fast forward some time again, and they eventually get married. One night following, Alicia and Nash’s marriage, Nash experiences the first massive delusion of his schizophrenia, which manifests as a high speed chase between Parcher and the Russians. In the hallucination, Parcher ends up killing the Russians. The result of this is Nash is now a grade A paranoid …show more content…
The side effects of schizophrenia that we learned in class are all present at this point. He has anxiety, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations and complete psychosis, believing that he is an American code breaker in the cold war. In order to stop the dysfunction, Nash is placed on drugs and insulin shots to counteract it. He learns that Parcher, Charles, and Charles’ daughter are all phantasms of his mind and part of his delusion for his entire life and his office is found to be covered in newspaper and scribblings. He lives at home for several years with Alicia and their marriage suffers. He stops taking his pills and the symptoms worsen to the point where he almost kills his newborn son by accidental drowning. He makes a promise to Alicia that he will beat schizophrenia without the medication ,and it takes some time, but he does so. He begins teaching at Princeton and settles into his role very well, albeit several relapses. He learns to cope with his psychosis and eventually to ignore it all together. At the end of the film, he is chosen for the Nobel and gives a heartfelt and romantic speech to his wife as he receives the
A decade or so passes and Nash is now a full-fledged doctor. As he is cracking a mathematical code for the government, he is introduced to a government agent named Parcher, who fights against the Soviets in the cold war. Parcher tells Nash that he wants him to be a code breaker for the government and convinces him to serve his country. Every time Nash cracks a code, he is to deposit it in a mansion that has a special mailbox. Nash accepts and now splits his time between teaching at Princeton and “breaking codes”. He meets Alicia, a student of his and eventual wife, when she approaches him about solving one of his problems that he posed in class. She asks him on a date, and that is the start of their romance. Fast forward some time again, and they eventually get married. One night following, Alicia and Nash’s marriage, Nash experiences the first massive delusion of his schizophrenia, which manifests as a high speed chase between Parcher and the Russians. In the hallucination, Parcher ends up killing the Russians. The result of this is Nash is now a grade A paranoid …show more content…
The side effects of schizophrenia that we learned in class are all present at this point. He has anxiety, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations and complete psychosis, believing that he is an American code breaker in the cold war. In order to stop the dysfunction, Nash is placed on drugs and insulin shots to counteract it. He learns that Parcher, Charles, and Charles’ daughter are all phantasms of his mind and part of his delusion for his entire life and his office is found to be covered in newspaper and scribblings. He lives at home for several years with Alicia and their marriage suffers. He stops taking his pills and the symptoms worsen to the point where he almost kills his newborn son by accidental drowning. He makes a promise to Alicia that he will beat schizophrenia without the medication ,and it takes some time, but he does so. He begins teaching at Princeton and settles into his role very well, albeit several relapses. He learns to cope with his psychosis and eventually to ignore it all together. At the end of the film, he is chosen for the Nobel and gives a heartfelt and romantic speech to his wife as he receives the