Last week was not my first time watching A Beautiful Mind.  I had learned about John Nash, the schizophrenic genius, while I was in high school. I then watched the movie, and loved it. However, this was my first time watching it after Nash and his wife’s death on the New Jersey turnpike two years ago. The movie was more impactful this time around because it kept reminding me that someone can suffer so much and survive, only to lose to something as trivial as not putting on a seatbelt. Thinking about his death, I research Nash on Wikipedia the night before the movie. During the viewing, I was shocked at the sheer amount of discrepancies between what I was watching and what I had read the night before. Nash never hallucinated a roommate, and a CIA agent, instead he heard things that weren’t there. He didn’t have a happy marriage for 30 years; while he was in a psychiatric hospital he had an affair with one of his nurses. After getting her pregnant, he abandoned the child and wife. His first wife then divorced him (thought they still lived together) and then remarried in 2001. In addition, Nash never went back on medication like the movie said. In many ways, Hollywood directly lied so that Nash would be a more sympathetic character.

My feelings are conflicted about this. In one hand, I see why the studio lied about being on medication. If they had sent the message that you can overcome schizophrenia by sheer will, a lot of people’s lives may be damaged. Also, it’s hard to depict auditory hallucinations in film, so I see why they had him visualize things that weren’t there. Still, I think it’s harmful to lie about Nash’s personal affairs.  Nash was bad in some ways, but that doesn’t mean his accomplishments in math and overcome schizophrenia are any less amazing or notable. By striking these personal affairs from the record, you effectively forgive them. You inadvertently send a message that as long as you are great at one thing, history will forget your flaws. I love Nash for his contributions to mathematics and I admire him for conquering schizophrenia, but I don’t think we should forget that he was a human with flaws.