A Beautiful Mind

The chameleon Russell Crowe is the reclusive, brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash. He achieves great results as a young researcher, but his career stalls and his family life falls apart as his mental illness worsens. John is schizophrenic, and before he realises that he is ill, his delusions are allowed to shape his life. The fact that the viewer does not know what is fantasy and what is reality either helps create much of the suspense.

With the help of his understanding wife Alicia, John manages to fight the illness and live a reasonably normal life.

A Beautiful Mind is not actually an entirely accurate title, for the loner John Nash is no great lover of humanity, but "A Complex Mind" or, better still, "A Hyper-intelligent Brain" would hardly sell tickets.

The award-hoarder, which among other things scooped four Oscars, rather resembles another Oscar winner, "Shine", the film about the similarly eccentric and mentally ill pianist David Helfgott. Hollywood loves loners who fight against the odds but eventually succeed in both their private lives and their careers. Like "Shine", A Beautiful Mind is an immensely well-told drama, though it cannot avoid becoming a little sentimental towards the end. The problem with both films is that they portray living people, and audiences may rightly ask themselves whether the film embellishes reality. What is reality and what is fiction?