Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.
In the contest of love and Jennifer Connelly against the infinitude of chaos, the match goes to love and Connelly, 1-0.
Mrs. Elizabeth Nash —as played long-sufferingly and with an understated intensity about her performance that can only be called gorgeous—is one of the several centerpieces of this memorable film.
You don’t get a clinical presentation of schizophrenia here, and the news coverage following this 2002 film suggests that you don’t get a history of Princeton mathematician John Nash’s life either.
What you get are epic performances by Russell Crowe and partner Connelly, together with enormously assured supporting roles by Ice King Ed Harris and Paul Bettany, together with the kind of rich and textured cinematography that must have upped Princeton’s application rate with its sheer autumnal elegance.
Crowe’s heroic battle against the delusions that plagued Dr. Nash’s mind are gladiatorial in scope, though it would be difficult to imagine a role more restrained and internal where that famous acting played out violently and before drooling crowds. As one of Rome’s famous gladiators, Crowe found redemption by bringing down a sinister emperor. Here he does so by quietly accepting the pens ceremonially laid before him by his Princeton colleagues and then by explaining that ‘it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found.’
Those who love or have been loved against the infinitude of chaos will understand Dr. Nash’s discovery, regardless of whether the real Nash ever said those things from behind a Stockholm podium.
Don’t overlook this film when building your posterity collection. As human drama goes, a finely crafted fiction can ring more true than the connected dots of what really went down and who said what.
Canter Bridge 
Leave a comment