John Nash is not, historically, capable of bench-pressing small airliners or crushing dogs into Hello Kitty-sized biodegradable statuettes. Most math professor/schizophrenic types are not.
Yet the casting people for A Beautiful Mind decided Russel Crowe (the muscular gladiator in Gladiator and the life-proving adulterer in Proof of Life) would make a perfect Nash on the big screen. And, to the Homer Simpson- stubbled actor’s credit, he plays his role to nigh-perfection, as Jennifer Connelly does hers. (We all remember Jennifer from the David Bowie-saturated Labyrinth and Aronofsky’s ultra-depressing, flawlessly-crafted Requiem for a Dream, right?)
So Mind has its good points.
It’s still no The Royal Tenenbaums.
The second major release from director/writer/Bohemian genius Wes Anderson, Tenenbaums delineates the high-water mark for Irony in the West, the zenith from which all non-literal speech can only recede. For the less philosophically bent film fan, Tenenbaums also meets and raises the bar for humor and innovative storytelling.
All of this leads to one question: Why did the Oscar people decide to name A Beautiful Mind the Best Picture of the last twelve months instead of a mildly less commercial but infinitely more groundbreaking work like Anderson’s opus or Chris Nolan’s Memento? Why does the infamous Academy reward art not only for its Greatness but also for its greatness, its ability to draw in crowds of thirteen-year-olds with cash to blow on seven-dollar Cokes?
The answer to the (rhetorical) question is money lining the pockets of men already rich enough the buy Libya, men with names which rhyme with “Steelburg” and Beisner.” The answer to the unstated dilemma of how to combat such disregard for artistic merit before the Almighty Dollar is boycotting, petitioning, and generally sucking the commercially important fat from the belly of awards shows.
And we thought the French had problems judging ice skating…