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A Beautiful Mind (2001)

By Matt Meier · July 14, 2011

Screenplay Genre: Biopic / Drama

Movie Time: 135 min

1.  INCITING INCIDENT

John Nash (Russell Crowe) tells Charles (Paul Bettany) about his desire to create an equilibrium stratagem of game theory in which nobody loses (“governing dynamics”), an accomplishment that would revolutionize mathematics and the world. (00:12:53)

2.  LOCK IN (End of Act One)

After successfully developing his theorem of governing dynamics, John takes on a prestigious position with Wheeler Labs at MIT as well as occasional work for the Pentagon, with his Princeton friends Sol (Adam Goldberg) and Bender (Anthony Rapp) working by his side. (00:24:48)

3.  FIRST CULMINATION (Midpoint)

John’s paranoid delusions reach an ultimate high as he believes Agent Parcher (Ed Harris) and his men are after him. A frightened and concerned Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) calls for help, and John – while speaking at a Harvard University National Mathematics Conference – is subdued and taken to a psychiatric ward, where he believes he is being held captive by Russians. (1:02:38)

4.  MAIN CULMINATION (End of Act Two)

John realizes and admits that the visions he’s been seeing – Charles and Marcee, Agent Parcher and the FBI fantasy – are in fact delusions, but he refuses to take the medication he had been forced to take before.  Instead, with the support of his wife, he vows to train himself to be able to decipher between the real and the imagined.  (1:45:31)

5.  THIRD ACT TWIST

After a long struggle in overcoming his delusions, John requests that Hansen (Josh Lucas), now head of Princeton’s mathematics department, allow him to return to teaching, something he hadn’t done since his lecture-gone-wrong at Harvard.  Hansen obliges, and not only does John become a successful teacher, he also wins the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his grand accomplishments. (2:00:01)