Viewing Guide/Questions for A Beautiful Mind Name: ______Psych & Comm Theory (CA-2) Spring 2010

Short Answer Questions

1. Describe at least two visual, but subtle, clues that Ron Howard gives in the movie prior to John Nash’s hospitalization that we are seeing Nash’s hallucinations, not actual people.

2. How many musical themes are used in the movie? What are they and how are they used?

3. Briefly describe how the character of Parcher connects the movie at a meta-textual level to societal issues of the 1950s. What is the opinion of the movie director and screenwriter toward those issues?

4. Why did Ron Howard and Akiva Goldman create the scene with the pens in the Faculty Lounge? (That is, what do the pens represent?) What cinematographic issues does this represent? (That is, what problems in creating a movie are solved by using the pens?) How does this relate to the use of visual hallucination instead of auditory hallucination?

5. What one sentence sums up the underlying “message” of the movie? How does that relate to the scene in Princeton when Alicia does not commit John and to the Nobel Speech scene? Is this what you thought the movie would be about?