There are movies that mark us as spectators. They do not have to be the ones that everyone or many people would say have reached deep inside them, becoming an immovable milestone in their emotional memory of the seventh art. And it doesn’t seem like An amazing mind (Ron Howard, 2001), an adaptation of the homonymous book by Sylvia Nasar (1998) about the brilliant American mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe), is a work that a good number of movie lovers would point out as cardinal in the baggage of their training in this sense.
But some of us do it very willingly. Perhaps more than it seems, considering that the film is the one that the voters of Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and FilmAffinity unanimously value most among those directed by Ron Howard to this day, and it also looks Seventy-four percent critical approval international according to the data of the first web page. The four Oscars won, like his Golden Globes and BAFTAs, round out our perspective on An amazing mind.
The unexpected Ron Howard movie
However, it is about The only one great surprise that this director has given us so competent and generally nondescript, and because of this very characteristic. There are those who remember him for contributions such as One, two, three … Splash (1984), Cocoon (1985), Willow (1988), Apollo 13 (nineteen ninety five), The Challenge: Frost vs. Nixon (2008) or Rush (2013). But perhaps he has only managed to stand out with the compositions of the haunting Rescue (1996), the poignant Cinderella Man: The Man Who Didn’t Let Down (2005) or the interesting The Da Vinci Code (2006).
And of An amazing mindOf course, it stands out as such an audiovisual feat among the rest of Ron Howard’s filmography that it’s as if the guy had taken one of the revitalizing black pills from the initial story in the failed miniseries. American Horror Story: Double Feature (Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, 2021). Without escaping at any time from his academic cleaning, eye; which means that we are talking about one of the best examples of what a filmmaker can do without risking a bit with style.
The audiovisual symphony of ‘A wonderful mind’
But the triumph of this precocious actor, who is known as the Steve Bolander of American graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) above all and who decided to convert himself to the position of those who command a shoot, it has been to achieve such a hell of an elaboration, so unexpected by the accuracy of his plans with the photograph of Roger Deakins (Barton Fink) and the power in the assembly of the usual Dan Hanley (In and out) and Mike Hill, who An amazing mind flows with the ease of a river in its dramatic torrent like a captivating symphony of moving images.
Always held, careful, by the beautiful soundtrack ofl deceased James horner (Avatar), the most dazzling thing he composed together with that of Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) throughout his career; without even dispensing with his Parabará. Eliminating this sensational score would condemn the feature film to sad nudity. Up to that point the music of the Californian penetrates into the bowels of the troubled life of the great John Nash, whom he interprets with absolute genius and a million nuances. an immeasurable Russell Crowe (Gladiator).
Nor have we seen more splendor to Jennifer Connelly (House of sand and fog) that like the Alicia Nash of An amazing mind. And what about the rest of the company: Paul Bettany (Gangster No. 1) he gets into the shoes of Charles Herman; Ed Harris (The hours), in that of William Parcher; Christopher Plummer (The dilemma), in that of Dr. Rosen; Adam Goldberg (Friends), in that of Richard Sol; Anthony Rapp (The Knick), in that of Bender; Josh Lucas (The weight of the water), in that of Martin Hansen; or Judd Hirsch (Independence day), in that of Mr. Helinger. A treat, all of them.
A proposal to understand the suffering of the great John Nash
However, Ron Howard is not the only one who was able to demonstrate that he was at the peak of his creative faculties. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (Fringe) gave us the most formidable text of his career, eloquent, emotional and playful, heavily criticized for softening supposedly uncomfortable aspects of John Nash’s biography, in the manner of Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher, 2018), and for turning his sufferings from the schizophrenia he suffered into a narrative spectacle. But these judgments are shortsighted due to the lack of understanding of the proposal.
Fidelity is not an artistic value; and what is wanted with the libretto of An amazing mind, which narrates what happens from the point of view of the famous mathematician for most of the two-odd hours that this Ron Howard drama lasts, is to show the protagonist’s own experience, as they do in their own business Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000) or The father (Florian Zeller, 2020), so that we really understand what it is to suffer from such a psychological disorder.
That’s why it was awarded by the National Alliance on Mental Illness of the United States (NAMI). And turn to script swings so tremendous, of the intensity of The sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999) or The others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001), which turn one’s reality upside down, not only constitutes precisely what Russell Crowe’s John Nash had to face, but the public accuses the blow with absolute astonishment and the essential empathy and, thus, the movie can be burned into his emotional and cinephile memory.