10 Movie Biopics That Lied To Your Face

9. A Beautiful Mind

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Universal

Mental illness is always a difficult subject for biopics to tackle, and often directors can be so impressed with their inventive approach that they prove more than willing to fudge inconvenient facts when they feel it's necessary.

Just look at 2001's Oscar-winning biopic A Beautiful Mind. The story of mathematician John Nash, this film saw Russell Crowe earn a Best Actor nod for the role and managed to secure a Best Picture win.

However, to say the movie is inventive with its handling of reality is a severe understatement.

For one thing, Nash's hallucinations were auditory, not visual. His wife divorced him rather than standing by him, and the real Nash's homosexual relationships were cut entirely from his life story by the filmmakers with no concern for how this affects his story. Not only this, but Nash's conspiracy theories about the threat from red Russia? Yeah, those wouldn't necessarily have been as maligned in McCarthy/ Cold War era America as the film depicts them.

In reality, it was delusions of an anti-Semitic conspiracy controlling the world which plagued Nash, a significantly more prevalent (and unfortunately still relevant) subject which the film eludes entirely.

Contributor

Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.