because you can't have too much entertainment... December 2001

Simplify Your Life
A Beautiful Mind Dir Ron Howard. Based on the life of John Nash.
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Josh Lucas, Paul Bettamy & Ed Harris
Iris Dir. Richard Eyre. Based on the life of Iris Murdoch
Cast: Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, and Hugh Bonneville.

Have you ever been asked the question "Who would play you in a movie about your life?" I shudder at the question. I can never come up with a decent answer or commit to one name. 'Can I have three or more actors to play the different sides of me, please?' 'OK, two? I am a Gemini after all.' If you have been asked this party question before, have your thoughts ever wandered away from movie stars who you would love to imagine look like you? Mine have. When presented with this question I have never been able to settle on an actor but the question that nags at me most is 'which element of my life or personality would the filmmaker present?' In a way it's the nagging question that haunts everyone -only here it's given a film context. The eternal questions for those mindful of their own mortality. "Will I be remembered...and if so, what will I be remembered for?"

Oscar season approaches. With it comes the annual flood of bio-pics. While I have yet to see Ali, the year's most heradled bio, I have recently seen two other films of the genre. Do they capture the real live person onscreen? How truthful are they to their subjects? Have the lives been distilled well into two hours? Reduction is necessary for any film contemplating a life -but has the protagonist/subject's life been reduced in meaningful or meaningless ways?

Both A Beautiful Mind and Iris, two films which recently opened, attempt to tell true life stories. Their subjects are two hard-to-pin-down academic notables who first gained notoriety in their college years. Mind tells the story of John Nash, a mathematician who won the Nobel prize in his golden years for a revolution in game theory (don't ask me -I understand nothing about math) that he developed in his youth. Iris tells the story of celebrated novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch who wrote books all her life up until the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Ron Howard gave himself a daunting task when he decided to direct the life story of John Nash. Though Nash's story does have a triumphant conclusion, one suitable to the temperament of this feel-good director, his life was one of darkness. He was a troubled man, socially inept, lost in his own mind and mathematical theories. He was bisexual, but married to a longsuffering woman. And most famously he was an institutionalized shizophrenic several years before he won the Nobel prize.

Howard kicks off the film while Nash's life is still young and promising, and perhaps while the director could still relate to his story. Unfortunately this is before things get interesting and it's here where there is much exposition and obvious foreshadowing of the events which will conclude the picture two hours and some minutes later. Nash was brilliant in his youth but socially inept. He was gifted at the abstractions of math, but seemingly couldn't get his head around more concrete matter like dating or attending classes.

Though Russell Crowe is never believable as a college student when the film begins, he is technically a strong actor and creates a consistent persona in these scenes that last throughout the picture. His star power and charisma go a long way in making a man with few friends and questionable social behavior into a likeable and interesting protagonist. His Nash is all bumbling and awkward, but obviously gifted and driven. As an actor, Crowe has an intense focus that works exceedingly well in the portrayal of this man. As you watch Nash work out mathematical theory or break codes you believe that he is living inside his own head. You feel that he's lost in the mysteries of the mind and that you are shut out from what's happening behind his eyes. The film really kicks into gear when Nash lands himself a plum job in cademia, finds himself breaking Communist codes for the government, and meeting the girl of his dreams Alicia (a fetching but unchallenged Jennifer Connelly) and marrying her.

The film takes a crucial and unexpected turn about halfway into the film which will no doubt alienate some audiences but that I found compelling. Unfortunately it's the last thing that interested me in the film. At about the time that the film begins to focus on and temporarily face up to Nash's illness (schizophrenia) it loses all focus and begins to head for the land of excessive sentimentality. Howard's sudden turn in mood here reminded me of an all too familiar feeling during the summer when Spielberg's botched A.I. opened: Take one filmmaker obviously gifted with feel-good material. Present him with dark material to stretch him. See the results: He can't commit to the darkness. He doesn't have the stomach for it. After Nash's gutwrenching diagnosis and meeting with his wife (the strongest scene in the film) the film descends into easy platitudes about love overcoming all, and becomes a repetitive, simpleminded, and occassionally annoying film that still has one hour left to go.

Whenever a film loses you halfway through it gives you a lot of time to focus on the other things that went wrong in its making. Why for example did the filmmakers not only shy away from Nash's bisexuality but go out of their way to point in the other direction with key scenes emphasizing Nash's sexual interest in women? Why is Alicia Nash, his longsuffering wife, reduced to a caricature fantasy woman. I respect Jennifer Connelly as an actress. She was sensational in last year's Requiem for a Dream but in this motion picture she has zero to work with. The real Alicia Nash is no doubt an interesting woman but as presented here she's a perfect 1950s clone. She's smart enough to be at MIT in the 50s but perfectly content to paint watercolors, fix her husbands ties, and act as an otherwise indistinguishable trophy at parties. Her other character traits: Hmmm, well she wears tight clothes, never gains a pound even during pregnancy or after giving birth, initiates lovemaking. And is unendingly faithful to her husband despite his illness and impotency. Loyalty is a admirable character trait but it is the only dimension that this woman had. I found her portrayal to be retro 50s longing at best and dangerous gender propaganda at worst.

But the greatest sin of all that the movie commits is in its portrayal of schizophrenia. Though the film starts out on the right foot treating the disease as something alarming and frightening by the end of the picture the filmmakers are busy trying to convince you that "all you need is love and willpower to overcome this mental illness. It's all in your head" Well, technically being a mental illness it is. But it's an offensive message nonetheless. The ending is bogus. The movie is too.

IRIS
Richard Eyre, an English director also took on a difficult task when he decided to write and direct the life story of Iris Murdoch. Unlike Nash's story, Iris does not have a happy conclusion. There was no way around her death or sad Alzheimers-fueled decline. Thankfully, Richard Eyre has the correct temperament as a director to portray a life beset by mental darkness. Iris was a freethinking young woman, socially charismatic (people reportedly swarmed around her), who lived a life of the mind filled with literary and philosophical theory. She was bisexual and promiscuous but by all accounts lived a emotionally committed life to her lifepartner, John Bayley, a longsuffering literary critic. Most famously she was a prolific novelist and academic celebrity before her mind was destroyed by Alzheimers.

Eyre doesn't so much begin the film as merely throw you in the water with the young title woman in her youth. She is seen swimming underwater, an image that will reoccur throughout the picture with both the old and the young versions of the character. The young Iris is played with a seductive bohemian vitality by Kate Winslet. We've come to expect perfection from her and she ably captures the electricity of this famously charismatic real woman. She has also apparently studied Judi Dench. The two women seem to truly be the same woman at different ages. A consistent persona - the head tilt, the ungraceful gait - is seen in both women (it also helps that both actresses share enormous screen wattage). Both Dench and Winslet are adept at projecting intelligence onscreen and you feel the full force of Iris' mind at all times as well as her ability to woo anyone. The film, though atypically told simultaneously in both youth and old age, begins to find its narrative momentum when Iris falls in love with John Bayley, a shy fellow student in the youthful narrative and discovers she has Alzheimers in the old age portions of the film. John Bayley is played in youth by Hugh Bonneville and in old age by Jim Broadbent. Like Dench and Winslet, they seem to share the same soul.

Sadly, this film which is quite beautiful at times takes a downturn after Iris is diagnosed with Alzheimers. Though the film remains compelling, the filmmaker can't seem to find a way toward narrative flow, shuttling as he does back and forth in time. The picture does gain some insight into personality and longterm relationships by doing so but at continual narrative cost. After the harrowing diagnosis the film descends into a repetitive, ruthless structure of suffering. It's not so much that the film loses you as that it is much too adept at capturing the horror of Alzheimers. Watching Dench disappear behind vacant eyes is wrenching, especially when you flitting back to the ever glowing Kate Winslet. The film, settling into a repetitious cycle has an hour left to go.

As the cycle of suffering and swimming wears on, one can easily become frustrated with the film. Why, if the film is meant to be a portrait of Alzheimers, should the filmmaker choose a victim as accomplished as Iris, who deserves a story about her life rather than a story about her disease? And though the filmmaker doesn't exactly shy away from Iris' promiscuities why is the ultimate confrontation between the young Iris and John (over her infidelity) so wrought with drama when theirreal lives continued on that way and he was reportedly content with the arrangement. And why is John Bayley, a notable accomplished literary critic, also reduced to a one dimensional doting husband who can see nothing but his wife? Where is his life? Was it too much to ask the filmmaker to show us a little of why Iris loved him back? Their's was a life of the mind and yet the only one who seems to think in the film is Iris. John Bayley suffers a similar fate to Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Loyalty is a admirable character trait but is it the only dimension that this man had?

These films have eery similarities from which they diverge considerably from one another but they both ultimately leave this viewer unsatisfied. In the end Iris is a stronger film but by only so much. Iris's higher degree of success can be chalked up to its level of integrity and truthfulness regarding both subject and disease. Its gender politics are also a lot less suspect than those found in the John Nash story. The hardcore may claim that the film softens Iris' promiscuous libertine ways but at least it acknowledges them, even if it discreetly looks away. The filmmakers behind A Beautiful Mind have not only looked the other way but they'd rather gouge out their eyes than see anything that didn't fit in with their Hollywoodized portrait. That film is entirely undone by Ron Howard's fear of the dark sides of human nature, and he reduces the brilliant troubled mind of John Nash to a bag of ticks. His mathematical accomplishments remain an abstraction throughout but at least they are touched upon. This is one area where Mind hovers over Iris. Though Iris is more fully captured as a persona, the film of her life negates her accomplishments in a more reductive way than the simpleminded Mind does to Nash's own work. Perhaps it's the point of Iris as a film to take someone extraordinary and watch them crumble... but it seems disrespectful to a notable career to gloss over accomplishments in favor of decline.

Despite all those frustrations both films remain touching in one small way: They may not be entirely honest at their core but they nevertheless paint satisfying pictures of loyal and supportive marriages of minds. The message that sends is a lovely one but unfortunately the films themselves don't add up to much. Both Iris and A Beautiful Mind ultimately fail as fully conceived portraits of triumphant and noteworthy lives. They are out-of-focus snapshots of formidable and complex souls.

-Nathaniel

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