Scott: Windows into A Beautiful mind

Ron Howard and Akiva Goldman’s conscientious use of windows in A Beautiful Mind is effective as a device for accentuating the experience of mental illness. The symbolic implications of the windows can lead viewers to uncover layers of meaning from multiple perspectives.  Their use in several pivotal scenes illuminates the structure of the visual narrative.

To appreciate the layers of meaning that can be derived from the windows in this film, one must first be familiar with its structure. A brief examination of the structure of A Beautiful Mind must begin with an even briefer summary of the life of its protagonist.

John Forbes Nash was accepted to Princeton in 1948 at age twenty. Despite his sometimes off-putting confidence bordering on arrogance, one of Nash’s contemporaries attributed his success in the mathematics department to his “clear, logical, beautiful mind” (Nasar xii). Nash promptly produced a series of papers on a new theory of mathematics that had applicability in a wide range of fields. While at Princeton, Nash married Alicia Larde and, shortly thereafter, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. During the decades to follow, he was pulled into a delusional reality with an ensemble of hallucinatory characters. The devotion of his wife and his eventual receiving of the Nobel Prize for his early work lifted him from social obscurity and lead to a miraculous recovery.

Screenwriter Goldman said concerning his approach to covering such complex subject matter, “Mental health movies are often like going to the zoo; it can be wonderful, but you go with the normal person surrogate and together you view the person with mental illness; you see the person from the outside in and it does a disservice to our ability to empathize and understand. If we saw the world the way people who suffer see it, we would understand them differently.”

And Goldman does just that. To the audience member encountering this movie for the first time with no prior knowledge, the first half of the film appears to be the fast-paced account of a genius’ involvement in a top secret government operation. The viewer becomes attached to the four main people in his life: wife, Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly), roommate and best friend, Charles (Paul Bettany), Charles’ niece, Marcee (Vivien Cardone), and government confidant, Parcher (Ed Harris), completely convinced of their reality. About an hour into the film, the audience learns that only Alicia is real, thus causing the viewers to question their assumptions about the reality that they have been invested in, similar to how it may have been for the real John Nash upon learning of his illness.

For those watching the movie for the second time or with prior knowledge of John Nash’s condition, the film is composed in such a way that it is still engaging. Sparsely placed clues to the falsity of his reality constitute an all-together different set of insights for the returning viewer.

As this film is primarily concerned with differing perceptions of reality, the prominent role of windows, in eighteen key scenes, gives the audience the option of internalizing the narrative from Nash’s point-of-view or as a spectator looking in. The duality of our relationship to windows – the ability to look in and out – makes them an appropriate symbol considering A Beautiful Mind’s ability to be ingested two ways by viewers.

Significantly, the first scene featuring a window is the first time Nash and the audience meet delusion number one: roommate Charles. Nash’s desk is situated against a large multi-paned window looking down on a courtyard on Princeton campus. The scene starts with a shot through the window of some students playing rugby below. The focus abruptly shifts bringing the square pane of glass into clear view at which time Nash’s hand appears in the frame and draws a dotted line down the center. Throughout the scene Charles is carrying on a one-sided conversation as Nash tries to concentrate on his work. The height of his apartment as seen through the window emphasizes his feelings of superiority. The shift in focus shows Nash’s obliviousness to the outside world. The dotted line bisecting the glass can be seen as a representation of the splintering of his realities at that moment.

His condition doesn’t reach a dangerous level, however, until a scene in which Nash, feeling pressure from the administration to “publish or perish” and coaxed by his imaginary friend, pushes his desk through the window sending it crashing to the ground. Looking down on the pile of wood remaining, the two laugh at their misguided aggression in the presence of some perplexed onlookers. The broken window represents the collision of Nash’s two worlds.  The shared laughter that ensues can mark either a moment of relief, for the first-time viewer, or a chilling realization of the seriousness of his condition, for the informed viewer, who sees, with the onlookers, only a solitary figure hunched over the window sill, chuckling to himself.

As the plot progresses, John Nash is caught up in an imaginary secret operation which leaves him almost debilitated with paranoia. This is visually represented in the film with multiple shots of him peering out various windows with the shades drawn; an image so striking it was later used extensively for advertising the film. Again, the viewer, depending on his perspective, either looks out with Nash, sharing in his paranoia, or looks in on him with concern.

Perhaps the most disturbing scene in the film is viewed by Nash’s wife and psychiatrist through a window over-looking his first session of electro-shock therapy. The audience looks on with the two from a very high angle, this time emphasizing Nash’s descent into obscurity.

After a brief period of recovery, Nash relapses back into his fantasy world.  To keep from being discovered, he takes his code-breaking to an abandoned garage behind his house. All the windows in this garage are completely opaque and allow no intrusion from the outside world, representing the gravity of Nash’s condition. No longer is he burdened with a distorted view of reality, but completely separated from it.

A scene following Nash’s eventual recovery shows him working on some equations on his enclosed front porch. Instead of being surrounded by windows, he is surrounded by mesh screen, a material that lets in both light and sound. At this point all viewers are on the same page along with Nash for the first time. His old (real) friend Saul comes to pay him a visit and they exchange greetings through the screen door, highlighting Nash’s final connection with and acceptance of the outside world.

The real John Nash remembers little from his days of insanity.  Akiva Goldman said about adapting Nash’s life for the screen “Within this perfectly detailed exterior life I could build an inner life and in so doing, give the audience a window into what it might feel like to suffer from this disease.”  A Beautiful Mind shows the expansion of this idea, under the direction of Ron Howard, into a motif that leaves the audience with a deeper understanding of the film’s content.

Brooke: Rosemary

Rosemary

The second night that scraggly tabby Finn was left out in the cold to scratch and meow and catch finches with his paws, Beulah finally decided the matter was worth investigating. She’d been watching him carefully; he kept cropping up in the strangest places. Sidling under the low wooden fencing that separated the Whitaker property from Mrs. Schneider’s—he would root about the bushes, crouch low watching the birds and chipmunks with a murderous glint in his eye. It all seemed very strange to Beulah. Usually the endearing little tabby cat would stay well within the confines of his own yard, and she had never seen him attack so many poor little animals before.

“Mom,” Beulah breathed, watching Finn’s tail as it twitched lazily and he weaved once again through the bushes that led to Mrs. Schneider’s yard.

“Mmmm?” Beulah’s mother was flicking through her 6^th grade test papers and scribbling notes hastily in the margins with her favorite red ballpoint.

“Have you seen Mrs. Schneider out in her garden lately?”

“No dear.” Another flick of a paper, another scribble.

Beulah squinted into the adjoining yard. “The raspberry bushes are getting heavy…”

“Are they?” She wasn’t listening; she frowned down at her papers.

Beulah stood up, pushed through the back screen door and began to follow after the cat. Hurriedly she reached the bushes and low gate that separated the two yards and located a place sparse enough to wedge a foot into the wooden planking and hoist herself up over the divider.

She came down with a light thump and found herself in Mrs. Schneider’s heavily decorated yard. It was like something from a picture book—a delightful mess of wicker lawn chairs, and elegant metal end tables, little stone birdbaths and pretty white lattices sprawling with Mrs. Schneider’s treasured grapes. It was chaotic. Bushes and vines bearing fruits and flowers of all kinds encircled a mossy courtyard. Although there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the way things were laid out, Mrs. Schneider had always been vigilant in ensuring they were well pruned and tended to.

Finn was perched now atop one of the many ornamented birdbaths licking his paws lithely. The bath held only an inch or two of murky green water in its basin; the rest appeared to have evaporated in the summer heat.

“What ya doing Finn?” Beulah questioned lightly, nodding her head to the cat. Finn stared back at her unblinkingly, giving the impression that he knew exactly what she was saying and simply chose not to condescend and respond. Beulah felt slightly reprimanded, as if she needed to explain herself and what she was doing.

“I just…I came to see Mrs. Schneider,” she said. She paused and then added, “Rosemary” as an afterthought.

As if in response, Finn leapt down from the birdbath and began to slink off towards the side of the house. Without knowing exactly why, Beulah followed him again, edging her way around the house to the front door. Finn paused there, sitting upright and gazing fixedly at the sliver knocker. When Beulah caught up, he let out a soft meow.

“Yeah? What is it?” Beulah asked. He began scratching loudly at the paneling of the house, like he’d been doing the past couple of nights. Beulah reached out to stop him, the noise was obnoxious and it seemed destructive—but then he was gone, dashing away from her touch. Beulah stood alone on the doorstep. She glanced at the knocker, reached out and knocked.

No answer.

She knocked again, “Mrs Schneider?!”

She listened hard for any sounds of movement, for any rustling or footfalls deep within the house. She knocked one last time, and then her hand reached out instinctively and gripped the doorknob. She twisted the handle, leaned into the door, and with a heavy shove, it groaned open. It was always unlocked.

“Mrs. Schneider?” She called again. This time her voice was soft, hesitant. The air was still. It was heavy. It made her feel like anything much above a whisper was irreverent, disruptive. The house was hot with trapped summer air, but Beulah shivered. She had never felt such stillness. It frightened her. She turned on her heel and quickly dashed back through the open front door, pulling mightily to get it shut.

    Things began to connect as she sprinted back to her house—the piled newspapers, the heavy raspberry bushes, the empty birdbaths, the starving cat. Oh God. How long?

Scott: The Drop

FADE IN

INT. BEDROOM – MORNING

Shot of an empty king-size bed.  The right side has obviously been slept in while the left side remains neatly made.  MR. GOSS enters dressed for the day, sits on the bed and takes off his shoes.  He lies down and we get an over-head shot of his face deep in thought.  The alarm clock goes off.  He sighs and gets out of bed, revealing the films title where he was lying.

INT. KITCHEN

MR. GOSS makes himself a nutritious breakfast.

EXT. FRONT PORCH

He goes out to get the newspaper and finds that someone has left a baby in a car-seat on his front porch.  He scans the street and quickly spots ALEX fleeing the scene.  MR. GOSS starts after him but abruptly stops when he recognizes the young man.

MR. GOSS

Alex?!

Pulls out his cell phone and starts dialing 

MR. GOSS cont.

(to himself with frustration)

Alexander Gonzalez!

EXT. AROUND THE CORNER 

ALEX’s phone rings in his pocket.  After determining he is not being chased, he stops running, nervously takes out his phone and looks to see who is calling.  He immediately ends the call and walks at a brisk speed.  As the gravity of the situation dawns on him, his breathing becomes more panicked and his face tightens.  His phone rings again and he sits flat on the pavement.  A shot of the phone shows “Coach Goss.”  He takes in a deep breath, releases, and answers the phone. 

MR. GOSS

(Loudly over the phone)

Why don’t you just step into my office

so we can talk about what just happened

before I really get angry! 

EXT. FRONT OF HOUSE 

ALEX knocks on the garage door and it immediately opens revealing MR. GOSS’s “office” which consists of a desk facing out and a chair on each side.  MR. GOSS sits behind the desk, peering out from the shadows. 

MR. GOSS

Have a seat, Son. 

ALEX goes to the empty chair to find that the car-seat with the baby is already occupying it.  He grabs a stool from the corner and sits diagonally to MR. GOSS. 

MR. GOSS

I came out to get the newspaper this

morning and found something quite

disturbing.  Did you know, Alex,

that less than fifty percent of American

 households have regular dinners as a family?

Picks up the newspaper on his desk and opens it.

MR. GOSS cont.

 The University of Michigan just did a

study.  Isn’t that something? It’s a

sad thing.  I read this stuff every day and I

 swear each time it makes me at

least two days older.  I’m not a geezer

yet but I sure can’t afford to keep

taking these double-helpings.  Wouldn’t

you agree, Alex?

ALEX

I… 

MR. GOSS

(exploding)

This is a baby!  A human baby! 

ALEX

I’m sorry Coach, I… 

MR. GOSS

For goodness sakes you’re a married

man Alex, you don’t have to keep

calling me Coach! 

ALEX

Sorry, John… 

MR. GOSS

I didn’t say you could call me John! 

ALEX

Sorry, uh… Sir.  I’m really sorry for…

Look, the baby’s not mine!  I swear, someone

left it on my doorstep this morning.  I know,

I should have taken it somewhere but

I was late for work and… 

MR. GOSS

(slowly and deliberately)

Alex, listen to me.  Why did you bring

him here? 
 

ALEX

I don’t know… I thought you’d know

what to do.

MR. GOSS

Why on earth would you think that?!

(no answer)

MR. GOSS cont.

Alex, you’re young.  Did you ever

think whoever this sad person is

didn’t just drop off their child on a

doorstep, they dropped him on your

doorstep.  Does Luisa know

what happened?

ALEX

She’s sleeping.

MR. GOSS

(calming down and staring into space)

Ya know, Lacey isn’t our oldest.

I wasn’t gonna tell you this but

my Megan had a miscarriage too.

It’s a terrible thing.  But then came

Lacey…  She was a miracle, in more

than one way.  I can still smell

the… 

(he gets choked up) 

…blanket they wrapped her in.

Alex, you’re not responsible for

this child.

Pause 

ALEX

What should we do?

MR. GOSS

Get in the car, I’ll drive you to work. 

MR. GOSS stands and walks toward the car parked on the street.  ALEX follows. 
 

MR. GOSS

(in “coach mode” with his back toward ALEX)

Get the baby, there’s no one

here to watch him.

ALEX grabs car-seat and rushes to catch up.

ALEX

How can you be sure it’s a boy?

They get in the car.

INT. CAR

MR. GOSS

Who would abandon a beautiful

baby girl?

This next scene has a whole different feel.  The intensity has died and a comfortable silence fills the gaps between sentences.

MR. GOSS

I guess Sandy Moller’ll think twice before

trying to undertake one of her little

projects again.  I told her to call me

and I could round up some boys

to patch things up but she wouldn’t

hear of it.  But I guess she wouldn’t

be Sandy Moller without that stubbornness.

   

ALEX

Coach John, Sir.  I can’t seem to

open that recommendation you

wrote for me…

MR. GOSS

Well, does your computer have XP?

ALEX

Ummm…

MR. GOSS

Windows XP!  For goodness sakes

you’re supposed to be generation

X – you don’t even have XP?  Whatcha

got on your hog, 2003?  I mean it’s

not a big deal I’ll just reformat it

and send you a new one.

ALEX

Okay thanks, that’d be great.

Long pause

ALEX cont.

(looking back at baby)

It looks like there’s a note.

Reaches back and grabs piece of paper.

MR. GOSS

What does it say? 

ALEX unfolds it.

ALEX

Just “Frankie.”  I guess that’s his

name. 

MR. GOSS

I’ve always liked that name.  It’s

Irish, I believe.

ALEX stares at MR. GOSS as something clicks in his head.

ALEX

So how’s Lacey doing? 

MR. GOSS

Fine.  She’s loving it.  I just went

and visited her.  Beautiful campus. 

ALEX

She’s been there what, like nine months

right? 

MR. GOSS

Um, yeah I suppose so, yeah.

ALEX

And, was it a ten month program you said? 

MR. GOSS

Yep. 

ALEX

That must be tough, not having your

daughter around. 

MR. GOSS

Is it okay if I drop you off here, I need

to do some errands?

ALEX

Absolutely, yeah.

ALEX gets out and stands on the curb.  MR. GOSS rolls down the passenger window. 

MR. GOSS

Listen, don’t worry about the baby.

I’ll take care of everything.  Lacey will

be home soon.  She’ll make sure I don’t

screw things up. 

MR. GOSS drives away.  Shot of the baby through the back window looking up as the tree reflections come over him in waves.

FADE OUT

Scott: Car-Seat

I give up!

Scott: Why Me?!!!

I hate computers.

Brooke: The Art of Research

If you want to write—your work never ends; it creeps into every aspect of your life. Research becomes an all-absorbing pursuit—everything is research. It is living.
Your job is to notice everything, the ordinary and the unusual, and document it all. Your job is to ask questions.

At the writer’s symposium I recently attended one of the panel members recommended (as a way to get ideas and avoid writers block) to simply always allow your natural curiosity to run its course. He then recounted how once he was giving blood, and had a simple technical question for the nurse, and he ended up having to go through train of people until he ended up in the office of the chief of medicine at some university talking for a good 40 minutes.
I used to think I could just sit down and write. I thought writing came from within. Now I realize a certain amount of collecting must take place before a person can ever create. Research sounds like boring work—but I have found that it is actually most exciting. One question, one train of thought, can lead me to a whole string of possibilities.

For my short piece on “Avatiach” I started with what I thought was a powerful image, and went from there. Alyne had mentioned to me before that the day before her dad left her whole family just sat in the backyard and ate watermelon. She said her mom and dad slept in the same bed until the day he left. She said it was a startlingly “seamless” transition. This image stuck with me, and I wanted to write about it. So…I started my research. This mainly involved interviewing Alyne. She was a good subject…and excellent interviewee. The details she remembered were golden…
The way her dog chewed on the watermelon rinds. The outfit she was wearing at the airport. The way her dad always gave her the “juicy” part of the fruit and he ate the rind or the seed. Exactly how the watermelon was eaten. The layout of her backyard. I just kept asking, and she just kept supplying me with the answers I needed to write convincingly.

Then I did some additional research online. I looked up a little more about watermelon in Israel. I browsed through a few accounts (on blogs) of people who traveled to Israel and bough watermelon from the street vendors. I read about the agricultural industry of Israel and discovered that watermelon is indeed one of their most popular and abundant summer exports.

When I told Alyne I wanted to focus on the watermelon I prefaced it with “I know watermelon probably isn’t THAT big of a deal in Israel…at least not as much as I make it out to be…” and she cut me off and responded with the line I use to open the piece. She said: “NO! it is a HUGE deal in Israel. Israelis eat watermelon.”

She gave me such good raw material; I really struggled to craft it into something meaningful that reflected the wonderful, beautiful, quirky details of reality. I struggled to capture the feeling and the essence of this experience. I still don’t think I got it down…but it was a good exercise in researching thoroughly and then writing.

And so…I am starting the process all over again. I have to turn in a short creative fiction piece this coming Thursday, and I am thinking about writing using my Beulah character. I have this scene in my mind where she finds out that her elderly neighbor woman has passed away. I imagine this neighbor as being fairly old and having no close friends or relatives to take care of the funeral services, and so some sort of state official has to inventory her possessions and take charge of the burial.

The problem is—I know nothing about how this works, so I just started asking questions. I started with the people around me. I asked Alyne. I asked my family home evening group. This may seem like a sketchy or unreliable source, but you’d be surprised at the kinds of great stuff I got just by asking my peers if they knew what happened in a situation like this. One guy in my FHE group recounted the (rather gruesome and disturbing) story of an old woman in his town that lived alone. She was a cat lady, and people didn’t visit her very often. When she passed away the cats in her house were left with no one to feed them. So…(and this is the gross but also interesting part) they ended up eating her body and then starting to eat each other, before anyone even discovered she died.
Others inform me that when something like that happens state officials do come and provide a cheap burial service. They also go through the house and sell off the stuff somehow.

With this limited knowledge I began to try to research online, and it took a long while but I have finally come across some worthwhile sources.
So if you would excuse me, I am off to watch a documentary on Netflix called “A Certain Kind of Death” that explores this very subject—the death and burial process when the deceased has no “next of kin.”

Tune in Thursday for a possible snippet from my creative piece!

Scott: Insert Petty Banter

I was gonna save this for later, but here’s a short film I’ve been working on. It is still very much a work in progress. Also, I just guessed on the format so it looks kinda weird. “Insert Petty Banter” is not the title. I just think it sounds funny.

mr-goss.doc

Scott: Punishments

Just a reminder that Brooke-Marie still needs to:

1.  Post something regarding her punishment.

2.  Create punishment options for me to choose from in light of my infraction last week.

Es verdad, no?!

Brooke: Avatiach, take 3

I know you must be getting tired of this. But tonight I took the time to finishing reworking this. It came out about 100 words longer. I am much more satisfied now, but still think this might only be reflective of a second draft. Serious writers can re-write dozens of times…I’ve heard people say writing is re-writing. It is certainly a slow, tedious process. But I rather enjoy it.

—–

Israelis eat watermelon.

During July and August—the height of the season—the streets of Israel fill up with large wooden melon carts. The carts amble slowly, unhurried, as the vendors call through crackly old megaphones in Hebrew “Avatiach! Avatiach!” — “Watermelon, Watermelon!” People leave their houses and flow into the streets, scrambling to purchase their favorite summertime fruit. Later they will serve it in a bowl, carefully cut and cubed, with nuts and tea for their guests—the perfect summertime treat.

Ami Tamir left Israel.
It was an impulsive decision. His parents were not very happy. He found love, love lived in Los Angeles, he moved and they married—all within a crazy whirlwind of a year. In LA the summer streets are filled with ice-cream trucks. Smooth and white, neat menus printed on their sides and loud tinny music springing from their speakers. At the sound, children run into the streets with pocket change to buy fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, strawberry milkshakes—whatever they can scrape up the money for. If they are lucky they might even buy one of those colorful Popsicles shaped like The Hulk or Spiderman. But even after relocating to the sleek LA suburbs, summer, for Ami, meant watermelon.
In LA he found no wooden melon carts ambling through the streets, or colorful open-air markets with towering piles of fresh produce. The people here, he found, spent very little time deliberating over their fruit; they had a “grab and go” mentality. But Ami still chose his fruit like he did in Israel, knocking his knuckles thoughtfully on the green-striped rind, listening carefully for the best and the ripest. He always found them and brought them home proudly to his wife and daughter. Together they ate, breakfast, dinner, mid-afternoon snack. Like a ritual Ami would cut off the best parts, saving the sweetest and juiciest for his daughter Aileen.

The day before Ami Tamir returned to his native Israel he ate watermelon with his family one last time. It was a hot day in Los Angeles, a still day. They sat together in the backyard. Fuse, the family dog, sat panting under the shade of the trampoline, chewing on watermelon rinds. Ami sat with his wife on the garden swing and watched as Aileen happily fished squares of watermelon out of the big bowl on the picnic table. Silent, stoic, he threw the rinds to Fuse, and a small wistful smile played on his lips as the dog caught them in her hungry jaws and gnawed them down to the green. “Tomorrow, I go back to Israel,” he stated quietly, testing the words out loud. “Tomorrow I leave.”
The next morning the family woke up, Ami packed his bags, together they drove the 10 minutes to the Los Angeles airport, and said their goodbyes.
“You both can come with me if you want,” Ami offered one last time, his voice was thick and clumsy in English. He had never managed to hide his accent.
Aileen shook her head. She had loved all of their summer trips to Israel, but could not envision spending the rest of her life there.
“All right,” he said in a moment. “Well, then goodbye.”
A quick hug, a wave of his hand, and he left. As impulsively as he came, he left. There were no tears, no sighs, just a silent seamless acceptance. He had never belonged in Los Angeles anyways—and who had ever believed he could stay? Not in the land of shiny white ice cream trucks and metallic, manufactured tunes. No, he belonged in Israel, with the avatiach.

Brooke: A Touch of Greatness

I watched this documentary this afternoon, it was amazing to me:

It was one of those things that really makes me think I need to teach–or at least be very thoughtful and particular about the education of my own children. I think I will end up teaching, in some way. Because it is so important. The end of the documentary made me tear up.

You can watch it on Netflix in the “watch instantly” section. It’s only 50 minutes. I highly suggest it.