Books and films are at once persuasive and deceptive. This is possible in that if something is written down, or is shown in living color on the screen, it is easy to interpret those sources of information as "true" or "accurate." This is even more likely when the subject of the work is a real person or historical event. In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, based on a book by the same name, schizophrenia is shown through the life and work of Nobel Prize winner John Nash. The way in which the film portrays Nash's schizophrenia is considered here.
The film follows Nash from his first days as a graduate student at Princeton University. We meet Nash and his roommate, Charles, and see Nash develop his considerable talents as a mathematician. Nash is particularly gifted at identifying patterns in numbers and symbols that elude other people. This is the talent that the government seeks out when it hires him to conduct secret analysis of popular periodicals in which the Soviets have embedded messages to their agents. Nash marries and continues his undercover work even as he progresses with his math studies, but eventually his delusions are uncovered and he is forcibly removed to a psychiatric institution. He goes off his medications, however, and his delusions return-there is no government project, no government agent, and it turns out that his college roommate Charles and Charles's niece are also part of Nash's delusions. Nash and his wife decide to combat the schizophrenia without drugs, although he does make reference to taking newer medications, and the film jumps forward to Nash's winning the Nobel Prize with his delusions watching from afar.
The film portrays the complicated relationship that schizophrenics have with the world around them. Nash's delusions are shown as being incorporated by him into his environment. For example, when he is forcibly removed to the psych
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