An Idea Of The Ability To Overcome Any Obstacle In One’s Life In The Film A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind is a film about a mathematical genius named, John Nash. It is based on the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. The film shows us the struggles that Nash went through – and how he overcame them - throughout his adult life. I believe that the main point or aim of the movie is to indicate that you have the ability to overcome any obstacle in your life. This is depicted in multiple stages of the movie but one example of this was when Nash was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Even though he would hallucinate about people, he was determined that he wouldn’t let that stop him from enjoying his life with his wife and child. Main characters in the film would be John Nash, Alicia Nash, Charles and Parcher. Nash was an ace at cracking codes. He had the ability to notice patterns in what we would see as a bunch of numbers. Nash attended Princeton University, him and his roommate, Charles, grew very close very quickly. Nash would constantly work on a theorem that he had in mind, one that would make a revolutionary breakthrough.
A few years into his studies at Princeton, Nash made this breakthrough. Once graduating from Princeton he started to to lecture at MIT. Whilst teaching, he fell in love with one of his students, Alicia. Whilst John and Alicia’s love for one another grows, he is approached by U. S government – more specifically an agent named William Parcher - to assist them with cracking Soviet codes. Soon after, Nash becomes deeply involved with a conspiracy theory about Russian-held bombs. Nash begins to scan U. S newspapers for hidden codes. Whilst this is going on, Alicia asks John out on a date. John took her to a governors ball. During the following weeks, Nash starts to leave envelopes containing deciphered codes in a drop box for Parcher to collect. After a while paranoia starts to creep into Nash’s mind. He starts seeing men watching him in the shadows. As a result of this paranoia, Nash begins to envision people, such as Charles, his roommate from Princeton. He envisioned Charles with a little girl, who was Charles’s niece, Marcee. Although these people that John envisions aren’t actually there, he believes that they are. Soon after this, Alicia becomes Mrs Nash as she marries John. At the wedding, John spots Parcher in a parked car, he was just watching John.
One day when Nash is in the middle of dropping another envelope in the drop box, Parcher races up in his car and demands that John get in. Once they speed off together they begin to be chased by two Russians. The Russians shoot at them and Parcher shoots back. Eventually the chase ended with Parcher killing both the Russians. Traumatized, John goes home to his wife, Alicia. He locks himself in their room and doesn’t speak, whilst, on the other side Alicia is banging the door and begging for John to open as she is worried and concerned. The following day at work, Parcher comes to see John in his office. John tells Parcher that he can’t continue to work for him as it’s too dangerous, especially because Alicia had fallen pregnant. However, Parcher tells John that if he stops working for him then John will no longer be protected from the Russians. Soon after, John is scheduled to speak at a conference.
During his speech a group of men in suits – whom John thinks are Russians - show up. John attempts to flea the scene, however, he is caught outside and drugged. When John awakens he finds out that the men weren’t Russian, but rather worked for psychiatrist, Dr. Rosen. John has been brought to a psychiatric hospital as he was suffering from schizophrenia. This is where we find out that neither Parcher, Charles, Marcee and the whole conspiracy about the Russians exists, it was all in Nash’s head. John was put onto a dosage of pills to help him stop envisioning these people. However, these pills left John unable to take care of his wife and child, making Alicia depressed. It was because of this that Nash stopped taking his pills, however, once he started doing this he began to envision Parcher again. Parcher insists that John isn’t hallucinating and that the Russian-held bombs are real. John believe him and continues his work from home and in an abandoned shed in the woods behind their house.
The next day Alicia leaves their child with John as he wanted to bath him. Moments later Alicia discovers the shed and sees all of Johns work inside of it. She immediately realizes that he is off of his pills and rushes back to the house to find their child about to be emerged with water as John had envisioned that Charles was watching the baby in the bath. Alicia attempts to leave the house with the child, however, she is stopped in the car by John, who has finally realized that he is hallucinating as he realized that Marcee never ages when he envisions her. This stops Alicia from leaving. They call Dr Rosen to their house for a meeting in which John tries to persuade the doctor that he can control his hallucinations. After consulting with Dr Rosen, John attempts to control his hallucinations. John gets permission from his former rival, Martin - who ran the campus- for access to the library at Princeton. Not long after, Parcher returned and began to reveal Nash as a coward. Martin manages to calm Nash down. Over the following years, Nash manages to ignore Parcher, Charles and Marcee. Martin then gives John the go ahead to begin lecturing. Soon after Terry Kellum, a student, approaches John with a theory. Alicia then sees John in the library teaching and helping students and she is immediately filled with joy and pride. Soon after, Thomas King visits John to inform him that he has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. King suggests that they sit in the staff room and have tea, reluctantly, John agrees. Whilst having their tea, one by one professors begin to place their pens in front of John as a sign of respect for the achievements that he has achieved. John went on to win the Nobel Prize and delivered a heart warming speech about love.
Management & Leadership
Nash showed management and leadership in the film when he was beginning to try and control his hallucinations. He believed that he would be able to control his mind and ignore the hallucinations. Dr Rosen didn’t think that it were possible but that didn’t stop John. He lead by making a decision and managed by directing himself in order to achieve what he wanted to. At the end of the film, Nash helps students in the library. This shows leadership as he was giving up his time to serve others by helping them with things that they were struggling with. It also shows management as he was teaching them how to go about solving certain things and figuring out how to complete things. Lastly, when Nash received his Nobel Prize. He spoke about how he had learned things through the struggles of his life. He was educating others through the lessons that he had learnt.
Management and leadership is important in the real world. Leadership is the ability to set a new direction for people to follow, and management is about directing the people on how to get there by following the rules or values that are in place. These are two skills that can be learned in life. These two skills are very beneficial if you want to succeed in life because if you have the ability to lead people, then people will follow you and trust in you and your abilities. Leadership is about getting people to understand your goals and visions so that they will help uu work towards them, whilst management is about directing people as to how and what you want them to do.
Creative thinking & problem solving
Nash becomes annoyed at the fact that he can’t find the prove and solve his theorem. He went on to solve this problem by going out with Charles to a bar. By doing this, he was able to reset his mind and take the focus off of his work, as a result he solved and proved his theorem. Another example of this was when Nash decided to ignore his hallucinations rather than take pills for it. Although this was a risky thought, Nash made it work. The problem was that the pills would make him incapable of taking care of Alicia and his child, this would’ve made Alicia depressed as she was before. But I’d Nash stopped taking the pills his hallucinations would come back.
Nash solves the problem by not taking the pills and learning to ignore the hallucinations. During the film Nash begins to teach a class at MIT. However, as the class began, workers began to drill outside. Nash closed the window so that they couldn’t hear the drilling, however it was very hot that day and Alicia decided to rather open the window and solved the problem by simply asking the workers to stop for a while as they were in a class. All of these problems were solved by the individuals thinking creatively as to how they were going to overcome the challenge.
Creativity and problem solving is important in life as you will always encounter an obstacle that you must overcome. If you don’t attempt to solve the problem then it could lead to a host of even more problems. The ability to solve problems will mean that you will succeed at what you attempt to do, as well as learn from it. Creativity will enable you to come up with more ideas or ways in which to do things or even improve on the ways in which we do things now.
Conflict Management
During the film, Nash goes about solving conflict through ways of intelligence. Nash and Martin didn’t get along at Princeton. There was tension between the two as Martin would mock Nash and tease him. Nash handled the conflict by ignoring Martin and focusing on his work. By doing so, Nash managed to prove his theorem and therefore, gain the respect of Martin. Nash demonstrates a great example of being the bigger man. He could’ve given Martin the reaction that he was looking for, but instead, Nash put his head down and worked, letting his achievement speak for him. By Nash doing this, the conflict was solved between him and Martin.
This is an important skill to have as conflict can restrict you from working to the best of your ability. If you let conflict plague your mind, you won’t achieve what you want to as you will be so focused on the conflict at hand that what you really wish to achieve in life will take a backseat. Conflict management can help you solve problems too. Conflict is a problem, by learning how to manage and handle it will allow you to solve the problem. When in a conflicted situation it is important that you keep your cool, conflict cannot be solved through violence or with an angry temper. By remaining calm in a conflicted situation it will enable you to think clearly and decide what the best option is to handle the conflict.
Conclusion
This movie was appropriate to watch as it is relevant to our grade 11 syllables. It’s relevant as this movie refers to problem solving, management, leadership and conflict management. In the film we were able to see different ways in which all of these subjects are showed, and perhaps even find new ways to go about – for example – solving problems. Although the film was not about our theme for this year, it contained valuable information and portrayals as to how the real world is. Not everything comes easy and sometimes it could feel like your world is falling apart, but this film showed that no matter how bad it seems, you have the power to work through it. Nash suffered from Schizophrenia, instead of taking pills to help which would limit his brain and body capabilities, he was motivated enough to work through his hallucinations. The film also shows us how important motivation is in our lives. Without motivation, you will have no reason to work for what you want. Nash was motivated to control his hallucinations, he didn’t want his family to be affected by his schizophrenia, his families happiness was his motivation.
Anti-plagiarism Statement
I, Latrell Stainbank, agree to face the full consequences of plagiarism. I hereby agree to the rules of plagiarism and agree that I will only use my own words and if need be reference any information I collected for this project.
Reference List
- https://www. go2hr. ca/management-leadership/understanding-the-differences-leadership-vs-management
- https://math. stackexchange. com/questions/284788/what-is-the-solution-to-nashs-problem-presented-in-a-beautiful-mind
- https://scholar. google. co. za/scholar?q=management+and+leadership&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
- https://www. imdb. com/title/tt0268978/plotsummary
