And we really can’t expect Hollywood to give us the stark reality that we see in psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric outpatient clinics.
Dr. Glen Gabbard, psychoanalyst and author.
Why not?
And does it matter?
“A Beautiful Mind” is a wonderful film, if you like inspiring stories. It’s the story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia. In the movie, John Nash attends Princeton University, develops some brilliant theories about economics while skipping most of his classes, begins teaching at MIT, and marries a beautiful student, Alicia. Then his life begins to break up. He begins having delusions– he sees people who don’t exist. He becomes paranoid and irrational. Alicia supports him through all of his struggles, however, and, eventually– after twenty years– he pulls himself together. He is nominated for a Nobel Prize (for work he did as a student) and makes a speech in Stockholm thanking his loyal wife for standing so firmly behind him.
Wonderful story, isn’t it? On a Christian website, the movie is given almost acclamation, “thumbs up” for it’s “inspiring” story. Is it inspiring? Do you watch this movie and think, wow, it’s wonderful to know that his wife was so loyal and supportive– I know I could be like that? The fact that it is a true story makes it oh so compelling! And so uplifting! That’s the kind of film some Christians feel that Hollywood should produce.
“A Beautiful Mind” is mostly lies and blather!
Oh, it is a “true” story. Other than the fact that John Nash married and abandoned a wife (and a child) to poverty before he met Alicia. And other than the fact that Nash didn’t “see” people (he heard voices). And other than the fact that Alicia actually did divorce him. And other than the fact that he went to Europe and joined an anti-American organization for a time. And other than the fact that he was arrested for soliciting sex in a men’s room in San Francisco (and that’s why he was fired from “Wheeler” — in real life, the Rand Corporation.)
Yeah, other than a few small details…
Some people I know say, “I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s true or not– it’s a wonderful story. Why can’t I just enjoy the movie without having to know the truth?”
Then you’re going to tell me to keep my chin up– if I only look on the bright side of things, life will get better.
The trouble is, in a few years, the movie will replace the real facts of the life of John Nash, just as “Schindler’s List” has begun to replace the real facts in the life of Oskar Schindler.
The funny thing is, in both cases, the real stories are far more compelling, far more interesting, and more “inspiring” in a true sense than the ridiculous Hollywood versions.
It’s worth a thought or two about Spielberg’s revisionist “Schindler’s List”. The original book was labelled “fiction” by it’s publisher until after the movie was released. It is now labelled “non-fiction”. So, who’s going to sue over the difference? There is no Association for Honesty and Truth to finance a legal challenge to this arbitrary conversion from fiction to projection.
And after all, what’s wrong with Schindler’s list?
Spielberg’s villain, Amon Goeth, likes to shoot at Jewish workers with a rifle, from his balcony. You see that he is a monster. But …
To pathologize Göth as Sadist, to demonize him and make him a monster is precisely to miss the most disturbing knowledge we now have of the average Nazi perpetrator: that he was, in an overwhelming majority of the cases, not a sadist, a “deviant” or an “aberration,” but rather a dutiful, law respecting civil servant carrying out his orders. Robert S. Leventhal
And that’s the truth.
Added 2024-02-05
I saw this wonderful example of exactly what Leventhal is talking about:
Who is the greatest movie villain of all time?
Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List has to be way up there.
There’s a scene where he’s sitting in a room with a rifle, killing people in the street for fun because he can yet is totally nondescript in his dealings with Schindler. His portrayal still makes my blood run cold when I watch the film. He is ruthless and unfeeling throughout the film until he meets his fate at the end: but even then he remains fanatical and without remorse.
What’s worse is there were plenty of fanatic Nazis like him. Scary thought.
I’ve watched attempts at copying devils like Slobodan Milosovich and Ratko Mladic from the Balkans Wars; and others like Mengele and Auschwitz commandants and savage guards. None come close. What Fiennes was able to accomplish is both exemplary and more than just a little unnerving. But credit to Fiennes for showing modern audiences what Holocaust survivors, families and murdered victims faced in that war.
There was no behind the lines with men like him roaming free.
From “Movie and Entertainment Sphere”, one of those obnoxious Facebook inserts from who the hell knows where.
For a really effective corrective, see “The Zone of Interest”. It’s brilliant and does exactly what Leventhal asks movies to do. It reveals, brilliantly, just how the worst evils in the world can be committed by people who outwardly appear to be “normal”, functioning, average people. Like us, if we allow it. Like Trump supporters who blindly parrot their leader’s idiotic blather and joyfully march in his grievance parade.