A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind
Babs,

As that certain commercial said, "I am not a doctor, but...I play one on TV".......

I did not read the book. However, my husband & I both saw the movie. He then, read the book. From his discussion of it with me, the movie is not an adaptation, at all, according to him. It seems that, even to use the term "Loosely based On the Story of...." would be a stretch from the book to the movie.

If I remember correctly, in our discussion, my husband told me, what I took to be poetic license, on the screenwriter's part. Recall the 'friends', the young man with whom he shared his dorm room. In reality, according to the book, I believe that he did not imagine those people, in reality. He did not hallucinate about them.

You will, no doubt have a better discussion with someone who has read the book AND has seen the movie.

However, there is no question, the movie was thought provoking!

fatima10

Thanks Fatima, I have been reading the book;
which I've wanted to do ever since seeing the movie. And
yes, they have truly gone overboard with poetic license
so to speak. The movie WAS brilliant, positive, uplifting,
and inspiring. The book is far more real. He had to be
hospitalized many, many more times. His disease was far
more severe than it was shown to be in the movie.
I left the movie with the profound sense that his recovery
from severity of the schizophrenia - was in some part due
to his intellectual ability to connect the fact that the little
girl in his hallucinations never got any older. They did make
a great and wonderful movie, unfortunately not very fact
based. But, inspiring just the same.

Babs
Babs wrote,

"The movie WAS brilliant, positive, uplifting, and inspiring.

fatima: I believe that it is because it is a movie, it is a fantasy, it is Hollywood's glossing over of the truth...."Let's make a devastating disease entertaining

Babs wrote, "The book is far more real. ...........
His disease was far more severe than it was shown to be in the movie. "

fatima: It appeared to me that he was characterized, yes, with a mental disorder. Yet, not truly schizophenia, but a lesser disorder, with less dire intrusions upon the life that he did live.

Fatima: And???? I would like to know a wife that could be that much of a saint as his wife was portrayed. No matter how much she loved him. No matter how intelligent she was. She was, in my opinion, shown, almost as other~worldly. I was looking for her halo and her wings, no disrespect intended at all. Another instance of making reality a glossy, wishful parallel universe that does not exist on this earth, other than in the darkness of the movie theatre.

BABS wrote, "I left the movie with the profound sense that his recovery from severity of the schizophrenia - was in some part due to his intellectual ability to connect the fact that the little girl in his hallucinations never got any older."

Fatima: Yet, in the book, do you not find out that the child and his roommate were not a part of his reality? Rather, they were put on the screen to represent the limitations of thoughts, actions that are somewhat limited in the translation of the written word to the big screen?

Babs:They did make a great and wonderful movie, unfortunately not very fact based. But, inspiring just the same.

fatima: Yes, I must agree with you here...
Babs wrote." a great and wonderful movie","not very fact based. But inspiring just the same".
fatima: We may say that about Cinderella; or another glamourized true, story: "The Sound Of Music". Again, read the book byMaria Von Trapp.I venture to say, that there was very little sound of music, in their lives at that juncture of their mere survival.

Uplifting, but it flys in the face of reality. Schizophrenia is not an uplifting situation. No matter how well a person is able to manage to live their lives with disease.

IMHO.

fatima10

I can't disagree with you about all that fatima. The movie
was in no way connected to the true story as told in the
book. I guess that's what Hollywood does to real life.
Make it appear to be more, or less than it is. I had the
EXACT same thought about the wife as well... what kind
of woman could have stayed and gone through all that
with her husband and supported him as well? Yet - you
forget that in those days - divorce was NOT well accepted.
Many, many women stayed in terrible relationships just
to avoid the stigma of divorce. As a matter of fact, when
I think about Bill Wilson, who was the co founder of
Alcoholics Anonymous, I am always amazed at his wife.
He - was never able to hold down a job again even though
his work did help many people regain their sanity and their
lives, the whole burden of support, money and just about
everything was ALL dumped squarely upon the shoulders
of his poor, enduring wife. Even though he did manage to
stay sober - his depression was so severe that on many a
day, he was doing extremely well if he merely went for a
short walk. So, even though it is hard to imagine, I think
that to stick it out, no matter how bad things were, was
more often the case in marriages during those years. I
know a great grandmother who did not speak to her husband
for the last 25 years of their marriage, he left nasty little notes
on the dining room table for her - but there was truly
ZERO communication between them, nor did she go to his
funeral. He had a mistress and she drank. He had beaten
her in the past - until one day, he came home drunk and
tried to beat on her for the last time ..... she picked up one
of those ancient, black extremely heavy table model telephones
and cracked his skull for him. This was the incident which
resulted in their eventual 25 years of silent endurance of
a mockery of a marriage, but then catholicism did not
condone divorces back then either... I don't know if they
do today either.

Reading the book has been SO amazing, particularly
the way that Princeton was operating during those
years that Nash, and Einstein and Von Neumann and
many of the worlds greatest mathmeticians were
gathered in one spot. A virtual hotbed of new ideas
new ingenuous developments, and all amid a school
that you could attend your classes or not, the MAIN
thing is to write your thesis and be published and
you could get your doctorate in 3 years.