I don't really dislike this movie, but giving it Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay!!! Come on, Academy, snap out of it: let's try giving the award to something that really deserves it and not something that is merely worthy.

Although A Beautiful Mind is well made (Roger Deakins' cinematography in particular being a standout), it is not in the same class as fellow nominees In The Bedroom, Lord of the Rings, Gosford Park and Moulin Rouge. All of these other movies take enormous risks, inflame passions and debate, and look like labours of love. Ron Howard's movie, regardless of the makers' intentions, comes over as a well intentioned but flatly earnest big budget made for TV issues movie. At it's worst, the movie is more about emotional manipulation than it is about producer Brian Grazer's aim of opening a window on understanding mental illness.

Russell Crowe has done much better work than on show here (and, deservedly, lost out to Denzel Washington for Best Actor); and Ron Howard himself has produced better movies like Ransom and Apollo 13; even his underrated The Paper is much better than this. That Howard at his least effective has beaten directors like Altman, Jackson, and Scott at their peak does not reflect well on the Academy's judgement.

When all is said and done, however, what does it actually mean? The history of the Oscars is littered with movies which lost out but are more memorable than the winners: Raging Bull, Jaws, It's A Wonderful Life, Psycho (hell, Hitchcock never ever won an Oscar - what does that tell us?), The Searchers, etc, etc, so it will not surprise me when, in a few years, this movie has been largely forgotten or reevaluated for it's true worth (a la English Patient) while Rings, Rouge, Bedroom and Park will stand unblemished as the true master classes in making stimulating cinema that they really are.

6/10