OK… Good Lord. I’m going to have to start previewing my replies.
:smack:
The DSM IS THE diagnostic…
grr
Me screeme. Me type english good.
(withdrawal… yeah yeah yeah)
It was easier for the film makers to merger the MIT professors and the Wheeler Lab think tank. This was Rand that Nash worked, also working as an MIT instructor. He never went to the Pentagon.
In the 50’s Nash’s era the government had genius’ work for the them doing research, all under the guise of National Security. In the Book ABM, John Nash was in the era of the draft, he did not want to serve in the military, even though he could have gotten a commission, he did not like to be in confined spaces with people.
When Nash was in the grips of Schizophrenia, he believed he was getting information form aliens, that were communicating to him in newspapers and magazines, that was correct in the movie.
It was easier for the filmakers, and the scriptwriter to make us believe he was beaking Russian codes, instead of Alien codes.
Nash rarely had hallucinations, but he heard voices in his head, as Schizophrenics do. He no longing takes Meds, he somehow willed himself better.
Mrs. Tranq read ABM bio, screenplay and attended a lecture by Dr. John Nash in Philadelphia, where these questions were answered.
Some of the movie was real, there were some liberties taken in the filming. But still a good movie and book.
Tranquilis wrote:
I’ve seen it written that he claims to have “willed” himself better. I have my doubts. I tend to think he is simply in a “remission” phase, as described in ShibbOleth’s post. Stay tuned for a relapse.
Tranquilis writes:
> It was easier for the filmakers, and the scriptwriter to make us
> believe he was beaking Russian codes, instead of Alien codes.
Easier in the typical Hollywood sense of "Hey, let’s assume that the people who are going to be seeing this film are stupid. If we show him working at RAND doing nuclear wargame scenarios and then later when his schizophrenia hits we show him as claiming to be able to understand messages from aliens, that would require too much thought from our viewers. Let’s change the classified work to something having to do with breaking codes. Let’s make the codebreaking work consist of him staring at lots of numbers projected on walls and intuitively figuring out the codes. Then we can show his schizophrenia later as also consisting of taping magazine and newspaper articles on walls and seeing intuitive patterns in them. This is simplifying his life to absurdity, but that’s O.K. Remember, we’re assuming the people who come to this movie will be stupid, so let’s not force them to think by making his life complicated.
> In the 50’s Nash’s era the government had genius’ work for the
> them doing research, all under the guise of National Security.
In the present time, the government has equally smart people work for them doing research, much of which could also be called national security work. This is no more or less common now than it was in the '50’s.
This last part of the paragraph in my post " . . . to think by making his life complicated." should have ended with a quotation mark.
I think it’s pretty hard to say if the Pentagon scene is “real” because the film and the book really diverge widely.
There is so much in the film that is not close to Nash’s real life, such as his son from a previous relationship, the fact that Nash’s wife divorced him (although still cared for him) and looks almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Jennifer Connolly.
The timelines are all off also.
Nevertheless, I saw this film on an airplane yesterday for the second time (although I didn’t buy the headphones). My impression is that the Pentagon scene was another delusion of Nash. Especially since you realize that the Nash character had already had delusions prior to that scene.
As for the “Charles” character, the obvious way to know that he was a delusion was to notice that he never interacts with anyone but Nash and appears in no shots where Nash is not the POV.
Wendell Wagner, I think you may have missed the point of the film.
The point of the film (as I see it) was not to present a biography of John Nash. Rather, the point was to give viewers some idea of what it feels like to be schizophrenic, from the inside. The filmmakers achieved this by causing the audience to identify with Nash.
The key to giving viewers a “schizophrenic” experience was to make the delusions plausible, so that the viewers would be as surprised as Nash when they turned out not to be true.
Now, if Nash had started receiving alien messages, the audience would have known right away that he was hallucinating, and would have ceased to identify with him. By making his delusion a more-plausible-in-the-real-world government spook scenario, the filmmakers were able to string audience members along a bit farther. The more-subtle delusion meant a greater impact on the audience when the falseness of the delusion was exposed.
By maintaining the audience’s identification with Nash deeper into the film, the filmmakers better achieved a “walk-a-mile-in-a-schizophrenic’s-shoes” sort of experience.
IMHO
I don’t think it showed him as “better” or healed. Rather, it showed that he was able to understand that he can’t trust his own perception and has to depend on others, much as a blind person might. Do you remember the part where the guy comes to scope him out for the Nobel prize? He grabs a student to get validation that what he was experiencing was real. Mind you, he could hallucinate the validation, but this seems to show that he has found what works for him to live with the problem.
StG
If you watch the movie with the Ron Howard commentary, he tells you the original scene of codebreaking is real (in the movie). He says that they don’t really know what Nash did for the Pentagon, but it most likely had something to do with codebreaking.
As far as Nash still having hallucinations, Howard said they made up the part at the end when Nash is responding to the question of how he would react if awarded the Nobel Prize. When Nash says he is taking the newest medications, it’s not true. Nash stopped taking medication, and learned to live with the delusions/manifestations. Howard said he didn’t want to send the message that anyone can deal with schizophrenia without medication.
I haven’t read the book, but plan to. I didn’t get the sense that Howard relied heavily upon it, though. He mentioned things he did get from the book. Information about Nash’s behavior at Princeton; being the Phantom, riding his bike in figure 8’s, etc. Most of the information he referenced as coming from Nash and Alicia.
Based solely on the facts of the movie, (the fictional facts), I thought he was indeed at the Pentagon for that codebreaking session. His co-workers didn’t seem to have any discomfort talking with him about it when he returned, and nowhere else did the movie suggest that he made up conversations with actual people. True, he heard false things, but these were always associated with Parcher, Charles, and Charles’ niece.
I was thinking of the pattern-finding bit at the social mixer at the beginning (“There could be a mathematical explanation for how bad your tie is.” 
) and his breakthrough with the Nash equilibrium which occurred in the bar occured with a somewhat similar set of special effects.
But I can see your point of view as well.
BTW, one of the greatest moments of catharsis for me while watching the movie was the point when when his work actually started looking like real math again. In the scene where that one guy (Sol or Bender) talked to him on the porch, and Nash was pretty doped up, and he tried to show him his work, I was totally depressed to see meaningless columns of numbers. . . but I could tell that Things Would Really Be Okay when we could look over his shoulder and see real math again.
spoke- writes:
> Wendell Wagner, I think you may have missed the point of the
> film.
>
> The point of the film (as I see it) was not to present a
> biography of John Nash. Rather, the point was to give viewers
> some idea of what it feels like to be schizophrenic. The
> filmmakers achieved this by causing the audience to identify
> with Nash.
I think you’ve missed the point of my criticism. I don’t care that Ron Howard thought that he had to simplify Nash’s story to make the audience identify with Nash. First, it’s not true that it would have been necessary to change the story to get a large audience. Producers and directors are unnecessarily dumbing down movie plots because they believe that film audiences are dumb, not because we really are dumb. Second, it’s insulting to the truth that Howard dumbed down the plot. Let me give a similar example. Back in the '40’s, a Hollywood producer offered to buy film rights to Richard Wright’s novel Native Son (one of the classic novels about the experiences of black men in the U.S.). He told Wright, “Oh, you do understand that I will have to change the main character to a white man.” Changing the plot of A Beautiful Mind so that Nash is purely heterosexual and so that he doesn’t have a girlfriend (before his marriage) and an illegitimate son and so that Alicia doesn’t divorce him and so that Alicia looks like a tall WASP instead of a short Hispanic (as she actually is) and so that Nash has cute visual hallucinations instead of bizarre conspiracy theories is an insult to the audience. It’s saying that we can only identify with a man who’s completely heterosexual and who never had a girlfriend before Alicia. And it’s saying that we can never identify with a woman who’s Hispanic and who for a while found Nash too much work for her to handle, so she threw him out of the house. And it’s saying that we’re too stupid to understand the true nature of schizophrenia, because we would prefer cute visual hallucinations instead of the paranoid conspiracy theories that Nash actually experienced. A director who says, “I changed the facts so that the audience could identify with the characters better,” is saying, “I lied about the facts because I think my audiences are stupid.”
Many of the explanations for why the Pentagon scene wouldn’t be “real” in the movie are well-founded, but they miss something that to me is dispositive:
When Nash breaks the code, the majestic Smart Guy Music ™ is playing. The smart-guy tune only pops up when Nash is brilliant and in his right mind (game theory scene, inspiring young students near the end, couple of other times).
In other words, near the beginning, there’s lots of Smart-Guy. During the body of the movie, no Smart-Guy. When he turns the corner, the Smart-Guy comes back, all is right.
Smart-Guy is playing in the Pentagon scene; that’s the sign to me, logic be damned (i.e., why wouldn’t they contact him again if he’s so good, etc.), that it’s “real.”
FWIW, some schizophrenics experience an improvement in their condition as they reach old age. This is not well understood, but seems to be a result of changing brain chemistry. This appears to be the case with John Nash.
On the contrary. I think Ron Howard thought his audience was smart enough to figure out, if Nash started communicating with aliens, that he just might be a little off. Howard wanted to keep his audience in the dark a bit longer, and keep alive in the minds of viewers the possibility that the delusions were reality.
When the delusions are then exposed, the audience gets a sense of what it’s like to be a schizophrenic and to be told that everything that has been so real to you isn’t real at all.
If the aliens had been referenced early on, this trick would not have been possible, since Nash’s delusions would have lost all plausibility. The audience would have spotted him for a schizophrenic right away.
Wendell Wagner, I am pretty sure you and I have concurred regarding the film before, but I couldn’t agree with you more. Sure, one could argue that there is merit in discussing whether the Pentagon scene in the film was intended to appear real or hallucinatory, but cichidiot disposes of that pretty quickly by referring to the Ron Howard commentary. So if that is what the OP is looking for, there is the answer. But since the point of the SDMB is to build on topics raised, in virtual salon style, I choose to continue the discussion of whether the movie is “legitimate” in its intent to portray the life of a schizophrenic character…
So, was it meant to have been real in the film? Apparently. But did it happen in real life? Obviously not. So, the question becomes, is the event in the film a legitimate device to explore the arc of the character named John Forbes Nash, regardless of whether it is the real person or a fictionalized proxy?
IMHO, no. Fundamentally, the movie took a few of the milestones in Nash’s life and graft them onto a boring, stereotypical Hollywood story. What about this story was not cliche? Boy shows promise, boy meets girl, boy faces challenges and tragedy, boy finds way to overcome and realize ultimate victory and the love of a good woman. What feels so false about this movie is that anything in Nash’s life that deviated from the stereotype was stripped away, leaving me feeling that a flawed yet interesting person was force fit into a false Hollywood box.
Did Howard and the others involved in the film depict schizophrenia in a legitimate way? IANAD (Psych or otherwise) but the overriding sense that what matters was the simplistic Hollywood story robs me of any sense that what was depicted was legitimate.
YMMV
I thought the Pentagon scene was real. In fact, I thought that Parcher was real after he showed up the second time, until Alicia found the shed. I actually thought Bender was James Spader for the first few scenes. When the movie was over, I thought back to the Oscars. The real John Nash was there and I still wonder if Charles and Marcey were clapping for him.
It is not impossible for a person with a delusional psychosis to recover to the point that he functions well without chemical intervention. It is far more common for persons with such a history to misinterpret the events and emotions of their daily lives to be improving while not taking medications, when that is not the consensus of the rest of the people involved. Not every psychosis is permanent, nor is every aberration of neurochemistry irreversible. Quite sadly, it is among the most desirable things in the life of a person suffering from a psychosis to be able to function without drugs. Very often, in fact, it is more desirable than it is to stop having delusional episodes.
Delusional episodes are not pleasant, in most cases. The voices are seldom kindly, and are often accompanied by delusions of other unpleasant sensory types. Yet the sanctity of the mind is a treasure beyond value, and doubly so, when it is called into doubt. I think the movie came close to hinting that being insane hurts. It falls short of the reality, but then, who wants to go the movies, and suffer? The fact that John Nash did not do or say the things in the movie is certainly a valid criticism of biography. But it may well have accomplished what has been pointed out. The viewers were never sure what was real and what was not. One consequence of the way the delusions were portrayed was very poignantly real to me. Finding out that it is not true is a horrible, frightening, thing, even when it comes as an end of pain.
Getting better is very hard. It takes from you the authority of self determination, it creates dependency on both people, and drugs. It makes your greatest dreams your worst nightmares, and denies you imagination as a means of comfort. It weighs down every decision in your life with the additional test of what is sane, and what is not.
“Am I being crazy?”
We asked each other that a lot, in the nut house. And the greatest irony of all is that other patients were the most reliable source of answers for that question. The Staff had an agenda. Yeah, you might be delusional about what that agenda was, but you weren’t wrong about the fact that they had one. The other nuts didn’t have any reason to pull punches. “Yeah, you’re talking real fast, and asking silly stuff again.” “Sigh. Thanks.”
I pretend to be sane quite well now. I don’t take drugs. I work. I know what is real in my life, and what is just something to think about. I follow the rules most of the time, and if I don’t, I try not to let anyone find out about it. I know that the things I once felt happening to me never did happen. I also know that my memory of those things is indistinguishable from my memory of things that I am assured did happen. How much different is that from your life?
And now, I feel better. I don’t need to hurt. I don’t need to be a hero, or a villain.
Am I being crazy?
Tris
“Don’t tear down the signs along the way. If you get lost, you’ll need them.” ~ A very crazy person I once knew ~
Yeah. You’re talking real fast, and saying silly stuff.
Shut up.