The cast
includes:
Russell
Crowe as John Nash
Jennifer
Connely as Alicia Nash
Paul Bettany
as Charles Herman
Ed Harris as
William Parcher
Adam
Goldberg as Sol
Josh Lucas
as Hansen
Plot
summary:
The timeline
of the opening scene of the movie is September 1947 where it is shown that John
Nash, who is a scholar gets admitted to Princeton University. On the first day
of college, he gets to meet a group of scholars in maths and science. He
also meets a scholar named Martin Hansen. During their meeting, Nash tells Hansen
that he has read both of his papers on Nazi Ciphers and non-linear equations and
also confidently claims that both of his papers are neither innovative nor original ideas. Actually, Nash straightforwardly tells whatever is in his
mind and never filters what to speak and what not to. He is a supremely
intelligent and shy man. He is living in a different world. Now Nash goes to
his room and meets his new roommate. His name is Charles Herman and he is a
literature student. Charle’s nature is exactly opposite to Nash’s. At first, they cannot communicate smoothly but later on, they speak nicely. Nash tells him
how each of his colleagues has collected their thesis paper but he has not
because he wants to work on an original idea. John never goes to class but
studies by himself.
John is so
much involved in his work that he doesn’t know what is happening around him.
Hence his friends think that he is a psycho. One day when John was working on
his idea, he is called upon by Hansen to play a game. Hansen tries to pull his
leg by telling him what if he never finds his original idea. John becomes
worried and works non-stop for two days in a library. His friend Charles comes
to meet him there and tells him that it has been two days since he has not gone
out of the library. Charles asks him why he makes art on the window panes.
John explains that he puts his ideas on the window He also adds that he has
three ideas in his mind which he has drawn separately on the panes. He points
to each of them, the first one is on a rugby game, the next one is about the pigeons
fighting for grains and the third one is about a lady trying to catch the thief who
has just stolen her purse. He wants to write a paper on their behavior on the above topics.
Charles now
takes John to the bar. There they meet other classmates like Hansen. There comes a lady looking at John for a long
time. His friends tell John to approach her. He goes there and lady asks him if
he wants to buy a drink for her. But John tells her that he probably wants to
exchange fluids (get intimate) with her. The lady gets disgusted, insults him, and leaves.
The next day,
John’s lecturer informs him that all his friends have already collected their
thesis but not him. The same night John goes to the bar. There comes a group of
ladies, and particularly a very beautiful and attractive lady too. Everyone gets attracted to her and wants to
approach her. And there looking at the situation, Hansen states Adam’s theory and tries to relate. He adds
that every guy will first try to approach that beautiful lady. But when they
get refused, they will try to approach the other ladies(her friends). Listening
to Hansen, an idea strikes in John’s mind. He tells that Adam Smith needs a
revision. He also adds that when each of them is approaching the same girl,
they are blocking each other’s way and none of them may be accepted too. But
afterward when they go to approach her friends, they, too will definitely
reject them because no one wants to be the second option anyway. What if they
don’t approach that very lady but approach the different ladies. In this way, John gets the idea of governing dynamic theory.
The next day,
when John goes with the idea to his lecturer, he becomes very happy and
optimistic about the idea because it’s an original idea on the one hand and something
that completely rejects Adam Smith’s 150 years old theory. The professor also
adds that John will get admission to any institute and he will get to go to the
Wheeler labs. This becomes a great achievement for John. But he has to take two
other friends who will work as a team with him. His roommate becomes very happy
for him. The strange thing is Charles never comes in front of John’s friends but
meets John only when he is alone.
5 years
later, John is called to the Pentagon in 1953 to decode an encrypted code. John
solves it in his mind only which leaves every officer so very surprised. At the
same moment, John sees a man far away who seems to be keeping an eye on him.
John doesn’t understand who he is. John on the other hand works as a lecturer at
MIT. But he really doesn’t enjoy that job because he thinks that teaching or
learning in class is total time waste. There too, he sees the same man who he
saw in the Pentagon. The man approaches him and tells him that his name is William
and he is from the Ministry of Defense Department. He tells John that he has been
looking for someone like John for so very long to work for them to decode the
information hidden in magazines and newspapers from The Soviet Union about
their plans to attack America. John accepts the work and continuously tries to find out hidden messages in magazines and newspapers. After he gets
any message, he keeps it in an envelope and puts it in a letter box outside a
bungalow. Whenever he goes to that bungalow, he feels that someone from the Soviets
is following him. This creates a lot of fear in him which makes him stay at his
home all day. At this time, John gets close to one of his students named
Alicia. These two truly fall in love with each other.
One day he
goes to his old place, Princeton University. There he meets a little girl who
asks her what he is doing there. She calls him by his name. John asks her how
she knows his name and she says that her uncle Charles used to be his roommate.
John tells his roommate that he has been dating a girl named Alicia and asks
Charles if he should ask her for marriage. Charles motivates him to do so and
John goes to Alicia to propose to her and she accepts too. Finally, they get
married. Now, it has been 1954 AD and John still works for Parcher. One day
after leaving the letter in the letterbox, he sees Parcher coming in the car.
Parcher and he get followed by some car and they even get targeted by bullets
too. But they save themselves anyway.
The next day,
John goes to meet Parcher and clarifies that since his wife is pregnant, he
can’t work for them any longer. But Parcher says that as already mentioned, he
can’t leave like this because Russians know that he works for them. And if he
leaves the work Parker won’t be able to give security to him from the Russians.
This makes John so afraid and worried that his wife could also sense it. But
John doesn’t tell anything to her. This makes her sad too.
One day John
gets called by Harvard University to deliver a guest lecture. There he meets his
old roommate Charles and his niece and John becomes so happy meeting them.
After that, he goes to deliver the lecture. While delivering a lecture, he sees a few men and guesses that they must be from the Soviet. John runs from there but
they catch him and take him with them. When John becomes conscious, he finds
himself with a psychiatrist in a unit. They think that John Nash is having some
mental problems. There he sees his old roommate Charles there. John feels
that Charles, too, must be from the
Soviets. He starts shouting at Charles. But the doctor says that there is no one
else except him and the doctor in the room. He is hallucinating people and
situations. But he doesn’t believe the doctor. John is taken under control at some
psychiatric unit.
His wife Alicia comes there and the doctor informs
her that John must be having some mental problem since the time he graduated.
It is because he told that he had a roommate named Charles during graduation but
in reality, there was no one named Charles. Alicia can’t believe whatever the
doctor said but the doctor convinces her by asking her if she ever met him, seen his
photo, or talked to him on the phone. He even adds that he called Princeton
University and they told him that there was no one named Charles Herman at the
university. Even John had no roommate during his living in Princeton. He also
adds that John has another imaginary friend too whose name is William Parcher
with whom he is working on a project against Russians. Not only this, John even
thinks that the doctor too must be a Russian agent. Alicia goes to John’s
workplace where she finds tons of newspaper cuttings. She even goes to the
bungalow and looks at the letterbox but she finds each of his letters there.
This means that they were never received. This really meant that John was
working for the government only in his imagination.
After that
Alicia comes to meet John where he tells Alicia that he has been wanting to
tell her for so long that he has been working for the government. And now
that the Russians know about him, their lives are in danger. He even adds that
she should meet William Parcher. Alicia tells John that there is no one named
William Parcher in the world. And he is not even working for the government and
all the letters he sent were still in the letterbox, unopened and she shows all
the letters. She tells John that he is ill and that whatever he is seeing is not the
real world. John cannot believe his wife and leaves that place. Actually, John
is suffering from a disease called Schizophrenia where he visualizes various
scenes, and peoples and live in a different unreal world.
One day in
the psychiatric unit, John starts making an incision in his hand and bleeds
heavily because he thinks that the army had put a device in his hand by which
they could detect him, which was not real. John is given shock treatments
for weeks and after that, he is sent to his home. He is given some medicines
too. Actually, John is schizophrenic and has so many imaginary friends like Charles
Herman, Charle’s niece, and William Parcher. The pills he takes help him to not
visualize imaginary scenes. The pills make him so inactive and blunt. This even
harms the physical relationship between him and his wife. John’s condition makes Alicia so sad and she keeps sobbing.
Due to this, John starts skipping his pills and as a result, John one day
starts visualizing a man running out in his boundary. John follows him and
reaches a place where he sees William Parcher. John says Parcher that he is
not real. But Parcher convinces him that he is real and even takes him to a new
place where John should work. After that, John gets convinced and starts
working from that place.
One day his wife comes to know about that
place and sees similar cuttings of the magazine at that place too. And she
realizes that John once again is getting visions and his mental health has gone
downstairs once again. Alicia comes back home running because she had left the
baby alone with John. She finds the baby nearly drowning in the bathtub. But
John tells her that there was Charles who was taking care of their baby in the
bathtub. Alicia gets so worried and angry and shouts that there is no one named
Charles. She goes down to call the doctor. There at that moment, John sees Parcher
too. Parcher apparently tells John to stop his wife from calling. John starts
visualizing that Parcher that is going to shoot Alicia. John pushes Alicia
to save her. Alicia gets worried and starts leaving the place in the car. Parcher tells John to stop her. And there
come Charles and his niece Mercie too.
This makes John think a lot. This is the pivotal point of the movie. He then
goes to stop his wife’s car and tells her that she was right because Mercie
must not be real because she has not grown old for years. And hence realize
that he truly is schizophrenic.
Then he goes
to the doctor. The doctor asks him if he still can visualize the imaginary
characters and John accepts the fact that he still sees them. The doctor asks him
why he skipped medicine and he replies that the pills were making him slow and
he was not being able to be a good father and a husband. Doctor tells him to take medicine to help prevent the worsening of the situation and the doctor leaves the place. John tells Alicia that he wants
to deal with his situation without taking medicines and she accepts it too.
John goes to
his college Princeton University where
he meets his old colleague and competitor Hansen. Hansen is the head of the mathematical department there. He permits John to work in the library. But John
is still dealing with his hallucinations. He sees William and Charles who try to
divert him. He tells them that they are not real. John tries to control his
mind and normalizes the visions. He continues his research and time passes by.
John gets to see his imaginary friends in his old age too but he normalizes
those things. In March 1994, a man approaches him and tells him that the
government wants to honor him with Nobel Prize. All the great professors gift
him their pen which is one of the greatest honor given.
For his research in game theory (which had the greatest impact on global trade and labor relations too), John gets honored with Nobel Prize in December 1994. But John tells that he would like to dedicate that prize to his wife Alicia because it was she who supported him in every step of his life and his decisions and fought his problems with full courage and dedication.
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