A Beautiful Illusion

A Beautiful Mind is one of my favorite movies. I first watched this film in my high school psychology class. After watching it a second time, I still really like this film. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, a mathematics genius, and his struggle with the many delusions that he has throughout his life. During the first half of the film, everything seems to be going well in Nash’s life. He developed his own equilibrium theory which revolutionized economics. However, the twist in the movie is that Nash is schizophrenic and has been having hallucinations all his adult life. One thing that I think the film does really well is showing that mental illness does not have a certain look. Most of the time you cannot tell if a person is suffering from a mental illness. John Nash is probably the last person someone would expect to have schizophrenia. Also, just because someone has a mental illness, that does not mean that they are not intelligent or smart. Nash is a perfect example of this. He is a math genius but suffers from a serious disease. I know some critics have an issue with the way that Nash is portrayed in the film because it made him seem nicer than he actually was; but, I think that film stresses an important point that mental illness can affect anyone.

One thought on “A Beautiful Illusion

  1. Hey! I also watched this movie in my AP Psych class in high school. And while the movie does show that you can’t really spot individuals with mental illnesses in general circumstances, I think what really amazed me was John Nash’s ability to ignore the hallucinations that he was experiencing without medication or treatment.

    Having read a little about schizophrenia and the degree it affects sufferers, it can get pretty scary since not only do you hear voices, but those voices are also constantly belittling the sufferer and can have a huge impact on daily life and self-respect. Nonetheless, it’s really phenomenal that despite having a mental illness, John Nash was capable of coming up with such evolutionary ideas.

    (P.S. his son, who is also named John Nash also has schizophrenia!)