THE EDGE OF GENIUS
by SASHA STONE

Ron Howard has been flirting with greatness almost since he began directing films, starting all the way back in 1984 with Splash. His more serious movies, like Apollo 13, Ransom and Far and Away, are decent enough, with moments of greatness, but never has he been so on his game as he is with his most recent film, A Beautiful Mind.

Perhaps it is the tight collaboration with his famously perfectionist star, Russell Crowe, who plays John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who, after decades of battling schizophrenia, goes on to win a Nobel Prize. Or perhaps Howard has finally come into his own, or has better learned how to trust his instincts, manifesting itself in his ability to hold back from the audience what they may discover on their own.

A Beautiful Mind doesn't let up from the moment we first meet Nash, a shy and awkward young man anxious to prove his genius to the world, to the bitter end when, turned ghostly by his battle with schizophrenia, he struggles to stay connected to the world of mathematics, haunting the halls of Princeton, mocked by students for his delusional episodes.

The majority of the film is concerned with Nash's mental illness - his reality. What at first seems like a cheap cinematic ploy ends up being a one-way ticket down a dark and difficult road into the horrible and the miserable of Nash's mind, and how, in America in the 1950s, it was easier to overlook eccentricities in hopes of discovering the next Oppenheimer or Einstein than it was to admit a growing illness.

There is a point in Nash's life where he is at a crossroads: he is about to be institutionalized (after exhibiting dangerous behavior) and he decides to confront his own delusions, to accept that they exist, even if they aren't real - this film doesn't say that he got sick, then got better. It says, he got sick but then he learned to live with it.

What holds Nash together is his relationship with his wife, Alicia, played with exquisite reserve by Jennifer Connelly. Nash is determined to hold on to what Alicia brings to his life (normalcy), to the point where he's willing to take debilitating medication, or, at her urging, to swallow his pride and ask if he can "hang around" Princeton because it might help him recover. Connelly, even the mere appearance of her, the great beauty that she is, is the breath of life that offers Nash's nightmare a respite. Where the film falters is that it doesn't give us enough of Alicia.

Nonetheless, Howard has the keen sense of a good director who knows that the key to this movie was to stay on Crowe's portrayal of Nash. His camera is relentless in its desire to unfurl its main character. He doesn't let up, to the point where it often feels like he's showing more than we can bear. But he can see, as we can see, that Russell Crowe is to acting what Nash was to mathematics - he studies the specifics then expresses the whole. With Crowe, his performance starts with mannerisms that he never wavers from - Nash's overbite, hand movements and speech patterns - but then he acts the whole thing with his eyes. It is a miracle to watch, easily the best of his already impressive career.

A Beautiful Mind is not the story of John Nash's sexuality, it is not even a dramatic retelling of his life story - it is nearly fiction, taking the main points of Nash's life, but altering them enough to get across the idea that there is a delicate boundary in the human mind between genius and madness. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsmith seems more concerned with the broad strokes, the universal experience of mental illness, than whether or not Nash was a bisexual, or gay. Even still, Crowe inserts some of this conflict in his performance, even if it isn't in the writing. It is also in Howard's direction, how he lingers on the smiling faces of seductive men, how he cast almost every part with pretty-looking men as if to say: this is how Nash saw the world, but that is not the ultimate subject, nor the point, of the film.

Some critics have taken the film to task for not being "historically accurate" about Nash's life, much the way they took apart the movie Shine for the same thing. But this is, in my mind, backwards thinking that doesn't get the big picture. Take, for example, the biopic Pollock. Ed Harris wanted to stay truthful to who Jackson Pollock was - the end result was a depressing actor's showcase, and nothing more. After all, isn't this why we have documentaries and biographies?

Filmmakers are artists too. We want insight and interpretation from them. We want them to take us places. We don't necessarily want this from our everyday life. Ron Howard has suddenly become an artist here, no longer just an entertainer. But even still, if you choose to seek out the truth from a film, you will get the truth about mental illness here, especially the kind that walks hand in hand with "genius." When I was a child my own father suffered from a type of schizophrenia, was hospitalized, given shock therapy and continues to struggle with the ordinary demands of every day life. This exceptional film doesn't prepackage schizophrenia to make it more palatable, but it helps us see things from a mentally ill point of view - and out of that, we may come to compassion and understanding more easily.

Most fans of David Mamet revere Glengarry Glen Ross as if it were a kind of Hamlet of cinema. Indeed, very few films reach the level of excellence the actors provide in that picture, just as very few films are as tightly written. The same can be said of Mamet's latest, Heist, a movie that is driven by those marvelous words, and by actors who know how to deliver them.

Writer/director Mamet reteams with the producer he worked with on The Untouchables, Art Linson, in hopes of making a movie that merges two genres: noir and gangster (or heist) movies. Heist has the somber feel of a noir, and certainly has a formidable femme fatale, but you won't find the same hopelessness and despair here, but rather the two things Mamet defines as noir's major elements, irony and violence - while at the same time utilizing the sentimentality of a gangster movie.

Gene Hackman plays Joe Moore, a jewel thief, married to the beautiful Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon), hoping to get out of crime for good, but forced to complete that one last job by an unlikely villain, Mickey (Danny De Vito) who insists that his not-so-smart upstart nephew Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell) join Joe's team. Jimmy is always threatening to screw up the job, steal the girl and the loot.

In film noir and heist films we have a world where laws and fairness are subjective. We align with the most fair crook, the one who doesn't cheat within the context of that world. Here, there are heroes and villains, right and wrong, and strangely enough, rules. These are thieves whom we don't pass judgment on because they're stealing from entities who won't be hurt. The film plays like a game of speed chess, where strategies have been memorized long ago and where wits are well-matched, players sacrificed, and the queen has much power and control. Each side is in check but there will only be one checkmate.

Danny De Vito has never been better than he is here - he was born to play in a Mamet film. He has all the best lines, and almost steals the show. But Gene Hackman is the star and it's the star's movie. Hackman is always good, always, even in bad movies, but here he is, as he is so rarely, the romantic leading man. He is fully capable of playing the lead, just as he is playing a supporting role. But Hackman has a certain sexiness rarely tapped - the best use of it was in Woody Allen's Another Woman, where Hackman played the man Gena Rowlands remembers as the passion not taken. Though he's remarked upon as being an old man, especially when he has to compete for his wife's affections against Jimmy Silk, Hackman's Joe is a charismatic force to be reckoned with. No woman would ever willingly choose Jimmy over Joe.

Mamet regulars Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pidgeon and Patti LuPone keep the ensemble piece humming perfectly along, as well as the interesting reunion of the Get Shorty trio of Hackman, De Vito, and Delroy Lindo, who plays Joe's only really trustworthy co-worker. The story is full of many surprises, a solid heist movie, with elements of film noir - it's simply a thrill all the way, but what really drives the film's engine is the spectacular dialogue. With unforgettable Mamet lines like "Everyone needs money; that's why they call it money," "He's so cool, when he goes to sleep the sheep count him," and "Frank Sinatra gave it a shot," all delivered by actors who know how to "do Mamet," this film stands apart from the rest because it transcends the genre - it is poetic and symbolic, verbal swordplay from start to finish.

The only thing really hurting Heist is the flurry of heist movies to come out recently, especially The Score, starring Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando, which is set in the same city as Heist, and follows similar twists and turns. Both films are good; both films feature fine acting by real pros, and both films have nice surprises - but it's Heist that will ultimately prove lasting. It's the language, the writing, we won't forget.

©2002 Sasha Stone
CineScene