Analysis- a Beautiful Mind

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A Beautiful Mind The story of John Nash’s life long struggle with schizophrenia and the excellent telling of that story were very compelling to me. I was drawn into the narrative and its content to the point it was very difficult for me to “dissect” the movie down to its component form. It was only in a second and a third viewing (at 2x speed with audio off) that I was able to note the cinematic language of lighting, camera angles, camera movement, and point of view. I was drawn into the movie by the use of pattern and the resulting expectation. Initially, I completely bought into the characters that turned out to be creations of Nash’s mind. Repeated narrative patterns representing them as real characters left me fully expecting their continued existence. In the pool table scene, at the pizza place, the truth was foreshadowed as the camera captured the characters points of view. Shots from John’s point of view included Charles while shots from his friend’s point of view did not include Charles. The two points of view are juxtaposed as they mock him for playing pool alone. Similarly, when pushing the desk out the window, interior shots of the room include Charles and exterior shots show only John at the window. The initial patterns representing the characters as real followed by the breaks in pattern showing them as only real from John’s point of view led me, almost subconsciously, through “mediation” or what Barsam & Monahan (2013) called “selection and manipulation of what was seen.” to the point of realization that the characters were not real and John was headed for a psychotic break. A second repeated motif including expectation has to do with scenes showing John’s wife waiting, apparently abandoned, as John is preoccupied with his psychotic breaks. The scene where she waits at the restaurant is an example of this. This theme is repeated at their

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