Background Of The Movie A Beautiful Mind

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The movie’s main story is about John Nash who arrives at Princeton University to further his studies in mathematics in 1947. It was there that he met his fellow course mates and also Charles Herman, his roommate who was studying literature in the same university and became his best friend very fast. Very soon he came under pressure when the mathematics department chairman asked him to publish an original idea. The pressure even became more intense because of his rivalry with one of his course mates.

He tried to find a truly original idea but he was not successful until his course mates who were in bar discussing how to approach a group of women. One of his friends quotes Adam Smith and recommends that "every man for himself", but Nash argues that a cooperative approach is more likely to lead to success. Immediately after this he is inspired by the idea that he himself stated about the cooperative approach and starts to work on a truly original idea that is indeed a new concept of governing dynamics. Later he achieved his goal and published his idea.

Some years later, he was invited by the Pentagon to crack the coded enemy telecommunication and because of his fast and efficient achievement in breaking the code he was given a new assignment by William Parcher from United States Department of defense to look on the patterns in the magazines and newspapers to prevent Soviet Unions potential plots. He starts to do his new assignment and deliver the results of his findings to a secret mailbox. After a while, he met a student who came into his office stating that she could solve a problem that was given by Nash in the class and Nash had stated that no one could solve the problem. The student’s name is Alicia Larde and invites him to dinner. Soon, they fall in love. Nash returns to Princeton and met his old friend Charles and his niece Marcee. Charles encourages Nash to propose to Alicia and soon they married.

One time, when Nash was delivering the results of his findings to the secret mailbox, the Soviet agents follow him and suddenly he sees William Parcher who asks him to get in the car. The soviet agents chase them and Parcher shoots them and the car in turn goes into the river. After this incident, Nash is scared of his life and tells Parcher that he does not want to continue his job, but Parcher threatens him and forces him to continue his assignment. Later, One day that he is delivering a guest lecture in Harvard University, he sees Soviet agents approaching him trying to take him. So, he runs away from them but he could not escape and is caught by them. In his effort to escape Nash punches Dr Rosen with the thought that he is the leader of the Soviet agents but the reality is that Dr Rosen is called by his wife to give treatment to him.

Later when Nash is sent to a psychiatric facility, it comes out that his best friend, Charles Herman and his niece Marcee and William Parcher only exist in his mind and his relationship with them during these years has been happened only in his own imagination. Dr Rosen tells Alicia that Nash suffers from schizophrenia. In the psychiatric facility, Nash receives insulin shock therapy and eventually released but under the condition that he has to take antipsychotic medicine. But after some time, Nash stops to take his medicine because he thinks that by using the medicine, after some time he won’t be able to solve math problems as fast as he has been doing all the time. But this causes Nash to relapse of character of Parcher, Charles and Marcee in his mind again.

Later, Alicia puts her trust on Nash and leaves him alone with their baby and then when she goes to the wooden house in the forest near to their house accidently, she figures out that Nash has stopped taking medicine and suddenly becomes worried about the baby. She rushes to the house to look for the baby and finds the baby drowning in the tub. After this incident, Alicia calls Dr Rosen to inform him about the condition of Nash and in the same time Nash sees Parcher telling him to kill Alicia and after his rejection Parcher decides to kill Alicia himself. Nash tries to rescue them from Parcher and pushes them on the ground. After this Alicia decides to leave with her baby and suddenly Nash comes in front of the car to stop Alicia from leaving and stating that "she never gets old" referring to Marcee. Nash comes to accept the characters that he has been dealing with all the time do not exist out of his mind. Nash decides to cure himself by just ignoring them instead of taking medicine. Alicia decides to stay with Nash and support him in their life. Nash goes to his former course mate who was also previously his rival in Princeton University and now is the Head of Mathematics Department in Princeton University. His friend allows him to work out of the library and some years later eventually he earns his privilege of teaching again. Finally, in 1994, Nash who has overcome his schizophrenia, wins Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his great work on game theory.

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Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that characterise a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Most experts now agree that personality is shaped by both nature and nurture. From the movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, we can relate the main character which is John Nash with the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions which is also known as the five-factor model of personality.

The first model is conscientiousness which is the state of being efficient and organized. It includes such elements as self-discipline and need for achievement. Conscientious individuals are generally hard working and reliable. When taken to an extreme, they may also be "workaholics", perfectionists, and compulsive in their behaviour. John Nash has a very high level of conscientiousness. This can be proven when he was portrayed as an individual that is very optimistic and efficient from the beginning of the movie towards the end. When his delusional roommate, Charles Herman tried to do some ice breaking with him when they first met, he wasn’t interested and in fact he told him that he was there to work. He is a very organized and hardworking as well, where he prefers to work on formulas rather than playing football with his friends. Since his goal back in Princeton was to find a truly original idea with regard to the governing dynamics in order to secure a placement to the Wheeler, he spent two days without eating at the library, drawing things that he could see from library windows such as a group playing touch football to relate them with mathematical formula in order to derive a theory. His ability to focus on the minute details and his dependable attitude can be seen when he was able to break the encrypted enemy telecommunication code and helped the government. He is also a very organized person and this can be seen when he organized well all the articles from different magazines when he tried to break code as asked by William Parcher, another imaginary character in this movie. As he gets older, his self-discipline retains as he continues to work out of the library and solve mathematical theory which is the Riemann theory besides the audit classes.

The second model is agreeableness. It generally includes the traits of being courteous and caring. Although John Nash doesn’t interact much with people, he is a very caring and empathic person. His character was portrayed as someone who loves kids. This can be seen when he used to play with Charles young niece, Marcee. He also tried to be caring to his wife, Alicia by offering to help her in taking care of their baby. When he was threatened by William Parcher about Russians that might go after him, he was very worried about his wife’s safety as she was pregnant at that time and wanted to send her to her sister’s house. In addition, he secretly stopped antipsychotic medicine that he was taking because he was frustrated with its side effects as he couldn’t make his wife happy. Furthermore, when he was announced as the recipient of the noble award recipient, he honoured his wife in his speech by saying that she was the reason for why he is there on the stage. That resembles his good-natured and courteous trait.

Neuroticism is one of the elements included in Big five Factor Model of Personality. Neuroticism is a personality dimension describing people with high level s of anxiety, hostility, depression and self - consciousness. They respond more poorly to environmental stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification. Neuroticism is a risk factor for the "internalizing" mental disorders such as phobia, depression, panic disorder, and other anxiety disorders.

Regarding to the movie of Beautiful In Mind, the main character which is John Nash, he is obviously has this type of personality. Significantly, we may see in his behavior, the way he speak and his walk always show he is anxious and depressed of something. He is anxious in a lot of things and stuff. For an example, he is anxious to look through his publish article ‘Governing Dynamics’ until he didn’t go to class and always stare to the space and draw his own theory at the window glasses. He is always faced the anxiety to create and find the original idea of his own. In addition, Martin always sarcastic him to come up with his own original idea. Other example is, he was afraid and anxious with his own imagination and delusion when Russian and Soviet soldiers catch after him.

In terms of depression, he was stress trigger the delusion he faced. For instance, he was stress and depress with existence of William Parcher in his mind that keep going ask him to do the job that not exist. Other than that, when he is studying at Princeton University, he was depressed because he can’t find the original idea. He can’t see anything through the formula his create that he draw at the window glasses until he hurt his head to the glasses and his head was bleeding. When he is in a treatment, he also stress and depressed until hurt his implant to takeout the imagined code in his wrist. All this depressions and stress behavior in John Nash’s character obviously shown in this movie.

Hostility is also one of the behaviors we recognized from John Nash. Hostility is seen as form of emotionally-charged angry behavior. In everyday speech it is more commonly used as a synonym for anger and aggression. This behavior can be seen after the scene he was chased and almost shot by Soviet agent in his imagination. He anger towards his wife because he is worried about the safety of his wife and ask her to go to his wife’s sister. He cannot accept that his own wife was not belief with what he told about the William Parcher existence. Moreover, he accused Dr. Rosen as Russian soldier.

Openness to experience in the five-factor model of personality is defined as the tendency of an individual to be imaginative, creative, curious and sensitive. They are the individuals who want to try new things. At the beginning of this movie, John Nash was potrayed as a creative person by his roommate (Charles Herman) , for creating "window art" which was a few sets of mathematical equations which consists of a group of people playing touch football, a cluster of pigeons fighting over breadcrumbs and a woman who is chasing a man who stole her purse.

In 1953, John Nash was an analyst from Wheeler Lab. Dr. Nash at this scene was shown as a very imaginative man as he broke the code for the Department of Defense in Pentagon from what was claimed to be secret government activities by looking at a few sets of numbers displayed on the screen. Besides that, John Nash was also very creative when he connected the stars using his fingers to visualize shapes of an umbrella and an octopus to impress Alicia.

The last element is extroversion. Extroversion characterizes people who are outgoing, talkative, sociable and assertive. The opposite is introversion which is people who are quiet, shy and cautious. Extroverts get their energy from the outer world (people and around them), whereas introverts get their energy from the internal world, such as personal reflection on concepts and ideas. Introverts feel quiet comfortable being alone, whereas extroverts do not.

Based on A Beautiful Mind story, John Nash more introverts personality than extroverts. We can see in this story where he tells his roommate, Charles Herman, that he does not like people much. Meaning that, he likes his alone times and personal space is important to him. The only person that approaches being a friend to John Nash is his roommate, Charles Herman. Charles Herman is the complete opposite of John Nash, flamboyant, extroverted and on the verge of being hedonistic. Nash’s lack of social skills is painfully obvious during an attempt to pick up a girl in a bar. He seems to have a lot on his mind and is not very attentive to the details of life.

As usual John Nash, mathematical genius gets his energy from internal world, such as finding an original idea to ensure his legacy. One day, inspiration comes when he and his fellow graduate students discuss how to approach a group of women at a bar. Start from there he become little extroverts. Hansen quotes Adam Smith and advocates "every man for himself", but John Nash argues that a cooperative approach would lead to better chances of success. This leads to a new concept of governing dynamics which Nash develops and publishes. On the strength of this he is offered an appointment at MIT where Sol and Bender join him.

After that, John Nash met Alicia Larde in an Advanced Calculus for Engineers course at MIT. John Nash was teaching the course, and Alicia was a student. When they fall in love, John Nash return visit to Princeton, Nash runs into his former roommate Charles and meets Charles's young niece Marcee, whom he adores. With Charles's encouragement he proposes to Alicia and they marry. John Nash who before more quiet became talkative to his friend, Charles Herman and also asking him opinion about marriage.

After John Nash accepts that although all three people seem real, they are in fact part of his hallucinations, he approaches his old friend and rival, Martin Hansen, now head of the Princeton mathematics department, who grants him permission to work out of the library and audit classes. Years pass and as Nash grows older he learns to ignore his hallucinations. Eventually he earns the privilege of teaching again. He communicates with everyone and starts new life as a normal person. Furthermore, he also listen other opinions about their field. He began to give lectures, become involved with his field of interest again and have discussions with others in the field. Lastly, he became a flexible person and is capable of putting himself into others shoes and also comfortable to be an extroverts person.