(REview) A Beautiful Mind

In Princeton University Fall of 1947, in a classroom sat John Nash. Professor Helinger sets off  with a speech. Mathematicians won World War II by creating the bombs, the communications codes, and cracking the ones used by the enemy. This is to tell the new students entering into the Math Department of Princeton they has potential to be important. After class, a recreation is set up for students to mingle. It is apparent that John is gifted by his ability to take linear reflections from glass to apply it mathematically to the design of a fellow students tie. Here is where he meets Neilson, the man who helped crack Japanese codes during his time in the military. Bender, who was talking with Neilson introduces himself as Richard Sol walks up to talk to them. Before John has a chance to introduce himself a man interrupts them and coyly asks John for a refill, as if he is a waiter. John recognizes Martin Hanson, a published writer for his theories. John calls him out on how the whole premise of his book is incorrect and walks away. We learn that both Hanson and Nash were rewarded the Carnegie Scholarship to Princeton and John is known as the West Virginian Genius.

In his room John begins to unpack and rearrange his furniture, putting his desk near the window. A tall gangly man stumbles in proudly announcing he is his roommate. Instead of confessing he drunk, he goes on about explaining how a hangover to the brain is the same as lacking water. John isn’t amused and goes back to his things. His roommate jumps in front of him on his desk and introduces himself as Charles Herman. Taking out a bottle of alcohol from his coat jacket he invites John to the roof to break the ice by getting loosened up. On the roof, John lets Charles know he doesn’t like people much because they don’t like him. Only mathematics is what makes him matter. He thinks going to classes and learning from textbooks is beneath him and students are lesser mortals. Charles lets him know that Mathematics won’t lead him to truth. They laugh together and look out over the campus.

John stopped going to classes and it’s been noticed by Neilson, Sender, Martin, and Sol. Martin tells John he is afraid to compete against him. They settle it over a game, which John loses despite his calculations. Upset and confused, he runs away to do his work. For two days he pours over books in the library. He can’t come up with a topic for his doctorate theorem or an original idea. Charles, seeing it’s time to rescue him, takes John to the bar to loosen up.  Later that week he is meeting with Professor Helinger. Because of his lack of attendance and no papers to grade he is close to losing everything. Martin has completed two more papers and is close to receiving recognition. Scared, he returns back to his dorm to try and figure something out. He furiously writes and draws, so panicked he hits his head causing him to bleed. Charles fights him trying to get John out to find inspiration, that the desk is the problem. Charles pushes it out the window, and they go to the bar. There he finds inspiration by applying a Mathematical theory called Adam Smith, using it to get himself and his friends dates for the night. Afterwards H=he goes to his dorm and works over a whole season proving the Adam Smith Theory as incorrect, challenging 150 years of economic theory. It’s accepted and he is offered a job at Wheeler Labs. He chooses Sol and Bender to be with him on his team.

            In 1953 Dr. John Nash enters into the Pentagon. The military has intercepted radio transmissions from Russia. John looks at the wall of  numbers and decodes latitude and longitude coordinates along a map that crosses the US Border. Above the Lab in a viewing area, he first spots FBI Agent William Parcher, who is unnoticed by other personnel. John leaves to return to Wheeler defense labs MIT campus, where he, Sol, and Bender have offices. John has been making covers of magazines such as Fortune since his time at Princeton. Preoccupied by his own studies and ego, he has forgotten his job as a teacher for MIT. The textbook he must use isn’t his taste, and on entering his classroom he throws it away as garbage. John then writes a complicated math equation on the board proclaiming few or none will ever solve it in their life time and it is where they will begin. At the end of John’s day, he leaves the college building to run into William Parcher again. Here begins the elaborate new job he always knew he was meant for. He did not know the purpose of the coordinates he found for the Pentigon, but Parcher explains. He is lead to a warehouse on campus that was previously thought to be abandoned. There he discovers the FBI have set up computers and scientists to use it as a temporary base of operations. John is now told he now must spy for America and decode hidden messages within the media and then report his findings dropping them off at a secure location. A scientist then proceeds to tattoos his arm with UV numbers which Parcher explains will change to reveal the entrance codes to the drop off area.

            The next day, John is eagerly working on magazine clippings when he is interrupted by a knock at his office door. A student of his, Alicia Larde wants to tell him she solved his equation. With a look over, he says it’s incorrect and expects her to leave. Instead she asks him for a date, as she is attracted to him. This romance blossoms and they marry soon after dating. They move to Cambridge, MA to begin their life. Unfortunately John has told Parcher he needs out of the job, which has left him paranoid about being caught by the Russians. This paranoia causes him to snap at his wife telling her they aren’t safe. This leads to her secretly making a call with urgency in her voice..

            Later John Nash is giving a lecture at the Harvard University National Mathematic Conference. There he runs into his old roommate Charles and Charles’ niece, Marcee. John wants to seek advice from Charles about William Parcher, but it’s his time to go into the lecture. During the lecture, John looks past the crowd to see men in trench coats walking towards him. Scared, he flees the hall and is chased by the men. He is cornered, then approached by psychiatrist Dr. Rosen who tells him they must leave. John refuses to leave lashing out so they are forced give him a tranquilizer and put him in the car. He wakes to find himself handcuffed to a chair. From John’s perspective, he thinks he has been kidnapped by Russian Spies who know about his work with William Parcher. Dr. Rosen explains John has been admitted to the Mac Author Psychiatric Hospital. He isn’t listening, but instead sees his old roommate Charles sitting in the corner shaking his head. John calls out to Charles thinking he was a spy all along who turned him in. Dr. Rosen says there isn’t anyone there and then knocks him out with another tranquilizer.

John Nash is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His wife, Alecia, finds the work he’s done untouched left at an old abandon house, the same house that John believed was a drop point. He never was a spy for the FBI, it was all in his head. Sol and Bender knew of his strange behavior and ignored it since John would be hostile if they asked about his classified project. Charles never existed, and at Princeton, John lived alone in his dorm. At the Psychiatric hospital, they begin an electro-treatment and put him on medication. Alicia breaks the news that Charles, William Parcher, and Marcee do not exist and his job was fake. Angry he storms away in disbelief. That night a nurse finds that he has clawed his arm trying to find the tattoo with the numbers to prove that he wasn’t crazy. John now realizes that his whole existence has to be questioned now and it’s hard process for him.

After a year of treatment and recovery John is released from the hospital. He starts working on another theorem to try to get his old job back and his life on track again; however, the medication starts clouding his thoughts and he secretly stops taking it. In April 1956, his visions return and tell him Alicia is a threat to his important work.  William Parcher returns and tries to get John to kill her. Alicia seeing John is once again being irrational calls Dr. Rosen. John sees Marcee playing and makes a realization that she can’t be real because she hasn’t aged. John decides he will try to control the visions without medication and Alicia loving him, decides to stay with him. In June, he stops by Princeton to meet with his old rival Martin Hansen. He is the new headmaster and has taken old Heligers office. John asks for a small job in the Library and to attend classes. Martin cautiously gives John a chance. Later on in the hall his hallucinations show up again. He sees Marcee, Charles, and Parcher, there he promises them that he will never acknowledge them again.

It’s 1978, and an aged John Nash is in the Princeton University Library. On the windows he has drawn and solved the unsolvable equation, Reimanns. A student recognizing John and his work and asks if he would like to join him and his friends for tutoring help. He reads over the student’s equations and gives them advice. This sparks his passion to teach again, later asks Martin if he could be a teacher again. In March of 1994, John has been teaching successfully for many years. As he is dismissing his class a man by the name of Thomas King is waiting outside, and with all new introductions John confirms he is real by asking a student if she can see him. King is a coordinator for the Nobel Peace prize committee. John learns he has been nominated for the Peace Prize.

The Nobel Prize Ceremony is held in Stockholm Sweden on December 1994. John Nash gives a warm speech marking the point he returned from self-destruction. He ends the speech by thanking his wife for staying with him during his purge of medication. Nash’s theories have influenced global trade negotiations, national labor relations, and even brought breakthroughs in evolutionary biology. To this day he keeps regular office hours in the mathematics department at Princeton and walks from his home every day.