From: Patrick Wilken (patrickw@klab.caltech.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 11:31:44 MST
> John K Clark Wrote:
> >his violent outbursts, his wife divorcing him...
>
>Unfair. It showed several violent outbursts and his wife did not abandon
>him even if they were divorced, and they remarried.
I stand ready to be corrected, but my understanding was that he had
at times quite violent outbursts; much nastier than were shown in the
film. Overall I had the impression that they went out their way to
make Nash likeable, which is fine if its a fictional story, but
irritating if in fact it is a whitewash of someone's life.
> >And where was the science?
>
>I think you ask too much. Put it this way, would you invest your own hard
>earned money into a mainstream Hollywood movie where a major plot point
>involved nonlinear parameter estimation
I would also expect a mainstream Hollywood film to sanitize and
create a "uplifting" story of someone's life to ensure ticket sales.
Never underestimate the intelligence of the viewing public as they
say... I agree that science is hard to present in films, and perhaps
this was not the main point of the film, but a little more science
would have been nice.
I was also a little surprised by the depiction of schizophrenia in
the film. Does anyone know how accurate the depictions of Nash's
delusions were? They seemed very coherent. Its hard to believe he had
an imaginary roommate all through college without this ever being
picked up.
best, patrick
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Wilken
Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology, Caltech
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Board Member: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://assc.caltech.edu/
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