Checking the requisite Oscar boxes, Ron Howard sanded off all the actual cruel edges of a genius suffering with very real and horrendous paranoid schizophrenia in a largely fictitious tale of how love can conquer all. Unfortunately, the Hollywood treatment conveniently ignored the hard realities of what was actually a fascinating biography of a man struggling a lifetime to balance his genius and madness, leaving viewers with an abundance of sanitized movie madness scenes, very little glimpses of genius, and a romantic relationship with no apparent basis. Read the book - would that the screenwriter and director had done so.