Performance Profile: Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind (2001)

This decade's winners have been spotty in terms of quality ranging from respectable but flawed to flat-out awful -- but some have found have found a spot smack dab in the middle of this erratic ten years of Supporting Actressing. One of those someones has suffered the "curse" of Oscar by following her career in a disappointing nose dive towards medioracy from which she has yet to escape. She won the Best Supporting Actress trophy when her film hit it big with Oscar, and she's since had a bad reputation with OscarLovers and cinephiles who look for something else within their winners, and I agree. But Oscar has done worse far more times, and he played it safe in 2001 by giving the award to....

...Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Jennifer Connelly plays Alicia Larde, an intelligent, young MIT student who falls in a strange kind of love with her professor John Nash (an obnoxious and self-indulgent Russell Crowe).

First things first: A Beautiful Mind is simply an awful movie -- the whole production is one big glossy Hollywood crapfest designed and tailored for a date with Oscar, that plays everything safe, and never takes any kind of chances with its narrative, never gives any real insight on its central character, and never tries to steer clear from gloopy melodrama which is what it shrivels up into. But there are two main positives about the movie; 1) the majestic, beautifully composed scoring, which keeps even the most emptiest of scenes flowing and 2) Jennifer Connelly's performance as the suffering wife. 

The story follows John Nash, a brilliant and ingenious mathematician whose prodigal reputation becomes threatened when he slowly falls into paranoid schizophrenia. He begins to hear things, see images and people who only exist in his confused mind, and soon his line between distinguishing reality from fantasy becomes blurred. At this time when he enters his illness he meets the lovely Alicia when the student takes a peculiar interest in this strange man. This platonic relationship leads to little romantic courtships from outlining the stars in the night sky...

 ...to tardy dinner dates...

...to having a sexually frank conversation while picnicking. 

The film does a pretty lousy job (of course) of laying out the early stages of their relationship and on page they are just not as fleshed out or as interesting as they should be. Its here where the only real seems in Connelly's performance are visible; she ably conveys Alicia's fascination to John and his abnormal idiosyncrasies yet her confusion is mistaken for underplaying. When she should be sharp and alert she's dull and mushy -- never quite rising to the occasion to make Alicia more than just a woman with a school-girl crush on the "different" guy. She should be making her presence much more vivid and bold for the following narrative threads to come, where finally, she's up at bat and knocks the ball out of the park.

The story progresses and Alicia becomes Mrs. John Nash, and just when things are looking settled for the couple, John's "involvement" with cracking cryptic codes/getting stuck in a sticky web of danger and his escalating schizophrenia send his marriage and life way off balance and he fears of putting his beloved wife in jeopardy.

It's at this point where Connelly's characterization seriously changes for the better as she steps up her game and actually gives the cliched role of the suffering wife a personality and life that the film never scripted her to have. As John's condition worsens and Alicia's life is turned upside down, Connelly conveys her constant anxiety and confusion about what is to become of their love together. To watch the secrets and lies unravel before Alicia's eyes is just heartbreaking, and she makes us feel genuine sympathy for a woman whose just as lost as her husband. 

In Connelly's admirable playing, Alicia never succumbs to messy, mannered theatrics because the actress infuses the tired role with a specific intelligence and determination that rings true in a film that rings so false. But even when interacting with the turgid Crowe, Connelly maintains dignity and plausibility, making this wobbly and unfocused scenario seem real enough to believe that she's going through it. Even more remarkable is how the actress' emotional clarity not only anchors the film, but her character's actions even as the script mires the Alicia into little more than just a maudlin, sloppy obstacle in the story.

 As the only saving grace of A Beautiful Mind, Jennifer Connelly not only rises above stock cliches but crafts a full, humane and only slightly flawed characterization that defies expectations and with this I give the haters of this performance something to ponder as Connelly is a perfectly respectable nominee who gets alot of slack for doing so much right.