A Beautiful Mind follows the rise to fame of mathematician John Nash from his socially-awkward and secluded student lifestyle at Princeton to his romantic life with student and later wife Alicia Larde. The film tells Nash’s story inventively through his struggle with schizophrenia and how the illness affects all his relationships, both professionally and personally. The film is able to effectively tie Nash’s illness with his brilliance as well as follow the progress of his illness as it slowly consumes his life entirely. By embedding certain characters from its very beginning such as Nash’s roommate, Charles Herman, director Ron Howard builds trust with his audience, driving us into adrenaline-packed action and suspense as we follow voraciously Nash’s venture with the Pentagon and later his attempt to crack Soviet codes. Howard carries us on this journey, building empathy for a character so skillfully that the epiphany of the protagonist coincides with our epiphany as viewers. When Nash comes to the realization that Charles is a figure of his imagination, that the Soviet plot is his own fictional indulgence, we feel just as betrayed. When he is in denial, so are we, and when he recovers and reconciles reality with his illness, so we too come to terms with what we chose to believe and what we came to understand as story and fiction.