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A Beautiful Mind - Through eyes that read the book first
the real Dr. Nash has made for his country and for humankind as well."
Instead, the movie proclaims his insanity, no holds barred. It doesn't even attempt to get across the supreme power of psychiatry during the time period, (the “Golden Age of psychiatry”) or even the zeitgeist of his work environment. There is no feeling of being in the fifties. There are no scenes of the RAND Institute. There is no social twitchiness. No funny or unexpected juxtapositions, no before and after. Instead, the integrity of the narration itself is attacked in a way that dulls the film's impetus. Can it be that stories of insanity no longer grab the viewer's attention span, and the makers of the movie were anxiously anticipating this, cutting and revising and inventing falsehoods? It would appear so. Regardless, the movie ends up being so far removed from the biographical that one can only wonder what the makers' intent really was...
I don't know if Campbell ever heard of Dr. Nash, but if he did, he would probably describe him as a hero and shaman who went beyond the normal domain of human consciousness and wound up in a schism that tore him apart. Or the great mythologist might declare that the would-be shaman was reduced and driven into exile, or that a man can be a warrior or a shaman, but not both. I can only speculate if Campbell would venture to say that the sphinx has been defeated or the wizard was reduced to a clown, or… the lion pretends to be dead.
At the very least, the institution of psychiatry should not be honored for seeking to destroy an asset to the American people. It should be made clear that an individual was destroyed, a man was broken, and the group suffered as a result. Princeton canonizes him to this day, as does the Nobel Institute. So should the motion picture industry, if it has any compunction to honor those who have fallen in combat or been wounded in heavy action during times of need.