Beautiful mind, courageous heart

(My essay Beautiful mind, courageous heart, about the life of Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash, appeared in the April 23, 2005 issue of The Philippine Star)

Beautiful mind, courageous heart

"What is as important as a beautiful mind is a courageous heart."

This is one of the best movie lines I have heard. Incidentally, this line came from one of the best movies I have seen---A Beautiful Mind.

A Beautiful Mind is the heart-wrenching yet concomitantly inspiring true story of the Nobel-Prize laureate John Nash. This Princeton mathematician /economist plumbed into the depths of schizophrenia which ruined his career, family life and reputation but through sheer grit and determination, and with the help of his loving wife Alice, eventually redeemed himself. He was even bestowed one of the most coveted prizes in the academic/intellectual community ---The Nobel Prize (in Economics).

The movie offers a glimpse into the celebrated mathematician's sufferings. From a brilliant student to a young, promising professorin one of the best universities of the world (Princeton) he gradually succumbed to schizophrenia.

John Nash was excellently portrayed by the brilliant Russell Crowe. Through Crowe's performance, one can glean how a schizophrenic struggles with the disease. As portrayed in the movie, Nash sees people who are actually not there. He converses with relatives or acquaintances he had not seen for a long timebut are just reenacted by his imagination. For somebody who is well-educated, well-respected and who has a very, very promising future, to be afflicted with the (at the time) baffling disease of schizophrenia is the biggest blow one could be dealt with. Luckily for Nash, his very patient and understanding wife Alice (portrayed by Jennifer Connelly whose fine performance gave her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) was with him through thick and thin.

John Nash's struggle as a schizophrenic is so palpable throughout the movie you can not but empathize with him. Anybody would feel crushed knowing one of the best minds of his generation is being slowly wasted and rendered useless by a stealthy, malevolent disease. Yet, what's awe-inspiring in the movie is how nash emerged triumphant from the disease which almost took away everything from him. He fought not just with his intellect but more so with his guts, heart and will. This part of the movie brings to mind the fair advice from well-meaning psychology experts that sheer intelligence may not be enough as any person goes through life's vicissitudes. One may also need to muster his heart, willpower and emotions (now collectively called "emotional intelligence"). As Connelly's Alice reminds us: "What is as important as a beautiful mind is a courageous heart."

John Nash would not be able to overcome his illness if he lacked willpower, determination and emotional fortitude coupled with the support, love and empathy of is family and friends which made him win over his debilitating illness. What made this movie especially meaningful for me is the fact that I have always been oriented to use my head more than my emotions. I have always put a premium on intelligence. I believe there are many people out there who are also like that. For me, I.Q. could be the be-all and end-all in this game called life. To wax poetic about it, reason is my primary weapon whenever I am faced with life's sticky situations. The movie taught me that there are many other human endowments as important, if not more important, than intellect. No matter how brilliant a person is, he still needs the support, attention and help of his family and friends. Through the help of his faithful wife Alice, family and friends, Nash was able to overcome his illness and eventually went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Nash's story has taught to not only rely on my mental endowments but also on my emotional and relational strengths.

Indeed, what is as important as a beautiful mind is a courageous heart!

 

(See the description and contents of my article in the post below)

The triumph of the human spirit

(The following essay appeared in the My Favorite Movie column, Entertainment Section, of The Philippine Star dated November 28, 2004 )

How does one protect the unspoiled innocence of a child when what he sees around him is a world at war, racism, hatred and the disintegration of his family?

This was the dilemma faced by Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) in the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-winning Italian movie La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful).

All it takes to conquer the harshness of war is courage, love, positivity and creative imagination.

Life is Beautiful is a poignant story of Guido Orefice , an Italian Jew, his wife Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) and their son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini) during the Holocaust.

Guido is a very, very optimistic man who fell in love with a pretty schoolteacher, Dora. Dora was unhappily engaged to a high-ranking Fascist official. Due to Guido's charms and persistence, he won Dora's heart.

Guido and Dora fell in love and started a family. Dora bore Guido a son---Giosue. The family would have lived a charmed life if not for the detention of Guido, together with his son Giosue, in the Jewish concentration camp somewhere in the Italian countryside. Dora, a non-Jew but finding no more reason to live if separated from her family, chose also to live in the concentration camp.

The concentration camp is a ruthless place. The Fascist authorities are unforgiving. Guido wants to shield his son from all these ugliness. To achieve this, Guido lied to Giosue by telling him that they are in a big game where the ultimate prize is one of Giosue's most favorite things---a real tank.

It is at this point when the movie takes a delightful, side-splitting yet sporadically sad twist.

Guido constantly contrives ways and means to hide the truth from his son---that is, that they are in a concentration camp, and anytime soon any of the people there may either be executed or gassed in the chambers. Guido's schemes were a buoyant contradiction to the bleakness of the surroundings. It is also these creative tactics of Guido which gives a nice, comical twist to an otherwise drab movie about the Holocaust and the Second World War.

One very, very moving yet hilarious scene in the movie happened inside the headquarters. The concentration camp administrator (a Fascist official) was telling all the prisoners in the room about the rules to be strictly followed inside the concentration camp. Volunteering himself to be the interpreter for the German official, Guido, instead of translating what the German official said, made it appear that the said official was relating the rules of the game they are to play. This brought a smile to Giousue who totally believed his father while the rest of the inmates were completely bewildered. Totally amusing was the abject disparity between Guido's buoyant spirit and mismatched gestures while doing the translation, and the German official's stern words and growling demeanor. Imagine an anti-Semite telling all the inmates (through Guido's wayward translation) that they are all in this big game where they are going to get their favorite things as a prize if they are going to cooperate!

There are many more scenes similar to the one described above interspersed throughout the movie. It is so heart-rending to see the utter disparity of the life situations the movie's characters are in and their constant struggles to keep their optimism alive for their own sake and for the sake of their loved ones. It is this almost Sisyphean struggle that any moviegoer (myself definitely included) could easily relate to.

Just like Benigni's character Guido, we all face life's vicissitudes with as much optimism as we can possibly muster. We may not have been victims of a real war but each of us has his or her own battle to fight. Daily living itself can be hard. Despite this, we keep on going and going and going.

Life is Beautiful is a moving vindication of the power of the human spirit and the strength of the human traits we have all been endowed with but which we sometimes fail to use---traits such as love, optimism, positivity and even creative imagination.

Roberto Benigni's character Guido may have died in the movie (this was not shown but can be clearly inferred) yet he was able to achieve his objective. He was able to protect his young son from all the inhumanities that could have happened in a war. At the end of the movie, Giosue was one of the survivors rescued by the Liberation/Allied forces. And what more befitting way to be rescued than by soldiers riding on tanks! Giosue was profusing with childlike exuberance thinking that the real tank was his prize for winning the game which his father has explained to him. Eventually, Giosue and his mother Dora were happily reunited.

Life is Beautiful is a wonderful movie because it reaffirms my belief in the innate capacity of the human spirit to triumph over insurmountable odds. It gave me inspiration to go on living. Any good movie should do just that, that is, inspire us, motivate us and make us remember what we humans can accomplish with the God-given traits that are instilled in us.

Life is indeed beautiful. Watching this delighful, independent Italian movie is proof of that. 

 

  

Beautiful dreamer Peter Kobel review in Premiere magazine