There are different ways of responding to and evaluating this film. On one level, it's a psychiatric case study of paranoid schizophrenia, and quite convincing it is. You do not realise, initially, that the narrative you are engaging with is illusory: presumably, much like the actual experience of mental hallucination. Secondly, it is an affecting love story between two people, where a woman's long-suffering loyalty enables her ill husband to find relative peace and security. And thirdly, it is a story about, or at least referring to, a particular kind of intelligence, as described by Howard Gardner.

Stereotype

In some respects, the film explores the familiar stereotype of the tortured and unbalanced 'genius'. There are plenty of examples of this in history; some of them unduly romanticised. Examples areWilliam Blake, Vin Gogh, and the character in the recent film The Luzhin Defence, based on a story by Vladimir Nabokov. The latter is a strange, scruffy but brilliant chess master, who manages to attract the attentions of a beautiful women. This is what I mean by 'romanticised'.

I once knew someone who could play a game of chess with you in his mind's eye: he was able to visualise the board and the pieces, and their respective moves. He played quite a good game in this way, and once did so, with me, while he was driving a car. A few years ago, rare children were able to complete the 'rubric cube' puzzle in a few deft minutes. What unites all these things is a highly developed mathematical and spatio-logical skill - and this is what John Nash had, winning a Nobel Prize in 1994 despite decades of personal struggle with mental illness. At the end of the film, we see him chatting with one of his Princeton University students; she smiles at his manner, where his real illness appears no more than an endearing eccentricity, when he is actually checking to see if the person standing next to him is real or illusory.

Fashion

In 2001, the film Enigma documented the code-breaking activities at Bletchley Park; in 1996 Dava Sobel published his book Longitude, described on the cover as "the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time". Nash's mental hallucinations revolve around US security, code-breaking operations. We have an appetite, it appears, for this sort of thing.

Howard Gardner

From the perspective of Howard Gardner, people like John Nash and Luzhin have a brilliant logical-mathematical and spatial intelligence, but - because of this? - have very poor personal intelligences, i.e. interpersonal skills. Gardner's model is not original, ground-breaking or authoritative, but it is a convenient way of referring to the notion of different kinds of intelligence. In the opening stages of A Beautiful Mind, Nash's imagined room mate is - significantly - the polar opposite of Nash's own character. He rolls into the room drunk, takes his shirt off, and proceeds to talk about women and DH Lawrence. In other words, he is physical, sensual, hedonistic and sociable, contrasted against Nash's introverted intellectualism.

What Gardner's model does not do - and neither does the film - is consider the relationship between different 'intelligences'. We learn nothing about Nash's earlier life and if his illness is the result of earlier trauma or suffering, but it is clear, although the film does not explore it, that his intellectual endeavours are motivated by emotional i.e. interpersonal hungers. He declares that he does not like people, and people do not like him; he seeks a totally original theory that will "dazzle people" i.e. earn their admiration and respect, and his final discovery, expressed at his Nobel Prize presentation (true to life, we assume), is that love is the ultimate solution. I wonder how much human endeavour - intellectual and otherwise - is motivated by the unconscious longing for love, companionship, and self esteem.

Meaning - and Love

Nash tries to express and resolve his needs through mathematical study; one of his friends has to advise him that there is more to life than work and he replies, teary-eyed, "what?" His wife explains that we live ordinary and mundane lives for the most part, and we ourselves imbue this meaning: it is not inherent.

The film opens and finishes with reference to the Japanese game of Go, which is also a test of spatio-logical ability - although unlike chess, the game involves a substantial amount of intuitive ability. In Japan, Go is related to a wider philosophical aesthetic. Nash impresses his future wife with the romantic game of recognising shapes - like an umbrella - amidst the multitude of stars in a clear night sky. The suggestion is that his work has an elegant aesthetic, based on the ability to discover and recognise hidden pattern. Nash sees this as a way of discovering certainty and therefore security; his wife has to point out to him that the really important things - like love - cannot be measured and predicted in this way. The logical mind has to accept that it does not have all the answers (there are other kinds of intelligences).

Pattern

Nash's hallucination is based on recognising hidden code within the material of magazines and newspapers. Earlier in the film, he watches pigeons and tries to discern their patterns of movement. There is growing evidence that actually, it is possible to recognise behavioural patterns from inconceivably vast amounts of data. In his book Emergence, Steven Johnson describes how organisational patterns emerge from the random activity of biology, stock markets, and the way the Internet has been evolving. At http://noosphere.princeton.edu the Global Consciousness Project is an attempt to document and analyse global 'moods' related to world events. They are very cautious in describing this project, and make no grandiose or unsubstantiated claims. Interestingly, this is a Princeton University project, although as far as I can see there is no mention of John Nash.

Delusion

Nash's illness is a 'delusion of grandeur'. In Neurosis and Human Growth, psychologist Karen Horney defined "neurotic pride" and the "appeal of mastery" as a means of resolving psychological suffering. In The Drama of Being a Child, psychologist Alice Miller refers to 'depression and grandiosity' as linked phenomena.

Nash's hallucinations were probably a projected fantasy where he could resolve his suffering. In his private world, he was an important genius, he had a faithful friend, and the affection of a beautiful little girl. It is the real love of his devoted wife that eventually stabilises him, and she has to emphasise that is what is real, compared to his imaginary world.

Balance

There are complex narrative, psychological and emotional threads in A Beautiful Mind; sme of these are not developed in the film. However on a simple level, it is an illustration of Gardner's logical-mathematical and spatial intelligences, and how these are sometimes pursued in an unbalanced way.

I doubt if Princeton University had counsellors who tried to help the young Nash live a more normal life. On the contrary, he was surrounded by intellectually competitive people and attracted to the honours of intellectual prestige. You could argue this is what universities are for: intellectual endeavour. You could also argue that intense specialisation ultimately fails, and that education has not always been this way, that Greek civilisation - the origin of Western life in many ways - was more holistic. Fortunately for John Nash, he had a beautiful and loving wife who stayed with him. Initially she was attracted to his Beautiful Mind; we have to assume that she saw beyond that and perceived a Beautiful Person.