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A Beautiful Mind Psychology

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This paper is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for Introduction to Psychology. The students were presented with a list of movies and from that list they would choose a film that would serve as the subject matter for a critical film review. During my initial review of the list I identified several films that I had viewed in the past, and of those films I kept a mental note of those that I would characterize as good fodder for a paper and some were, well, better left forgotten. I did not think any of them were worthy of a being turned into a paper thus I focused my attention on those that I had not seen before. Knowing a choice had to be made; I slowly scanned the list for a second and a third time in search of ?the one?.…show more content…
is a biographical film that chronicles the life of John Nash from early adulthood through mature adulthood. The film is broken into the standard three act film structure. The first act, exposition, establishes Nash as the main character and seeks to inform the audience of brilliance. The second act, rising action, reveals Nash?s schizophrenia and explores his experience as a schizophrenic in contrast to his life as a mathematician. The last act, resolution, chronicles Nash's return from the depths of his disease culminating in the presentation of the Nobel Prize for Economics. The film does not stray from standard structure. However, its brilliance lies in how the story transitions from Nash?s point of view in the first act to Mrs. Nash?s point of view in the second act. This technique serves to highlight the normalcy experienced by the schizophrenic contrasted with the reality experienced by the supporting…show more content…
The focus of the last act is to wrap up the loose endings that were revealed in the second act. We learn that Nash?s illness significantly strains his marriage, but Nash?s wife is stoic throughout it all and encourages Nash to continue pursuing mathematics. The audience discovers that the mathematics community has empathy for Nash and recognize that his genius should continue to be nurtured. As a result, Nash?s college rivals allow him to unofficially continue his work on campus and support him during moments of relapse. Somehow all of this has a positive impact on Nash. Nash stops taking his medications in order to allow him think with clarity while works to solve mathematical equations, however this clarity also extends to his awareness of his disease. Nash makes a conscious effort to ignore the hallucinations and delusions which allows him to return to work in the classroom as well generate a new interest in his earlier work on ?Game Theory?. The film concludes with Nash accepting the Nobel Prize for Economics attributed to the impact his ?Game Theory? paper had on changing modern economic
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