The film A Beautiful Mind follows a brilliant mathematician through his gradual unraveling due to paranoid schizophrenia and later his pursuit to overcome it. The film begins in September of 1947 on John Nash’s first day at Princeton University as a graduate student. Nash who is recognized as a genius among geniuses, never once attends class saying, he instead spends his time at Princeton searching for “a truly original idea”. Nash forms a close friendship with his roommate, Charles Herman, an English student and a competitive friendship with four other math and science graduate students. Mid-way through his final year of school Nash comes up with his “truly original idea” which is considered a breakthrough of great magnitude. Upon …show more content…
One of his students Alicia Larde, asks him out and eventually the two fall in love and marry. While guest lecturing at Harvard Nash suddenly flees the building believing that there are soviet agents in the audience who will kill him. This subsequently leads Nash to be emitted into a psychiatric facility where it is reveled that Agent Parcher, Charles Herman, and Marcee, Charles Herman’s niece, do not exist and are in reality hallucinations created by Nash’s mind. Nash is revealed to have paranoid schizophrenia that has gone undetected for years. Nash receives treatment for his disorder but is unhappy with the side-effects of his medication decides to stop taking them. He relapses and puts Alicia and their child in danger. Nash realizes on his own that his hallucinations are not real and decides to try to cope with them on his own. As he gets older he learns to ignore his delusions and eventually returns to Princeton to at first audit a class and then eventually teach. At the end of the film, Nash receives the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his “truly original idea” that he came up with in graduate …show more content…
He is witty and cleaver but also rude, harsh, and egotistic. Near the start of the film Nash says, “My first grade teacher, … told me... that I was born with two helpings of brain, but only half a helping of heart” (A Beautiful Mind). Nash lacks many close friends and finds social interactions exhausting. He distances himself from others and obsesses over gaining recognition. When confronted with failure he cannot cope. However despite his social incompetence he is a genius. He sees patterns in everything and process complex mathematical problems with ease. Because of his genius, his rude and occasionally odd, behavior is tolerated which results in his schizophrenia going unnoticed for much longer then typical. Nash’s hallucinations start in graduate school, with the sudden appearance of Charles Herman, his caring and slightly wild roommate who is everything that Nash is not and also only exists in Nash’s mind. Years after graduating graduate school, another hallucination appears this time in the form of powerful and mysterious Agent Parcher. Nash’s hallucination prevented him from forming strong connections with those outside his self. His hallucinations made him believe by getting close to others he was putting them in danger. However he does manage to close Alicia Larde, and in doing so becomes a little less cold and a little more social. They fall in love and