Daria Doering

This is my new all-time favorite movie.  It affected me deeply, and I keep thinking about it.

To me, the main message of the movie was the power of love to triumph over anything … that the most important thing in life is a connection with another human being, and that can accomplish miracles.  Of course John Nash’s wife was a pretty incredible human being: attractive, smart, aggressive, strong, honest, cooperative, dutiful.  It reminded me that most of us get approximately one chance for a good marriage.

The other huge take-home from the movie was something about humility and pride.  John Nash went from the highest to the lowest and then to a good middle.  Such extremes in his life.  He started off very prideful and arrogant.  People didn’t like him, for good reason.  He later descended into the utter humiliation of mental illness, acting out his schizophrenia extensively, electroshock therapy, meds and their sad side-effects,

I think what was ultimately the most impressive about John Nash is that he had the substance to work up from his complete mental breakdown, to start again from scratch.  He turned out to have the virtue, or developed it along the way, to completely humble himself: to become the opposite of what he was before.  This still makes me cry to even think about it.  How many people would do that?  Most people are too “proud” to deviate from what they are, to admit that they have been deeply flawed, to recreate themselves.  That’s what he did, and it took years, decades, but it finally worked.

Maybe what saved him in the end, and what made his life difficult in the beginning, was simply that he was honest.

The movie was very well-done.  It had an interesting suspense thread … the viewer doesn’t know for a long time what is delusion and what is real.  Plus the scenes and incidents each conveyed so much.

I guess I identify with John Nash, believe it or not.  Also with his wife.