Enjoying watching " A Beautiful Mind "

[moof]

managed to miss it at the Theatres and never rented it.

Missed the first half hour and only had it on in the background
but it grabbed hold and did not let go.

To paraphrase, the part where the Doc says

" can you imagine, to find out that everything and everyone that you love, that's important to you are not just gone, that they never existed, what kind of hell must that be ? "

Seemed strangely familiar, a world that many Americans are now entering into.

[xray s]

1. another beautiful mind... just as crazy

"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer." - Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America," March 18, 2003.

[ForrestGump]

2. Great stuff, but only partially true

Some of the best and freakiest bits are Hollywood fabrication.

Mmmmmm...Jennifer Connolly.

[RC]

3. I saw that movie twice, willingly.

And I don't usually watch movies twice. The second time I noticed things I missed the first time. Like the girl running through the flock of pidgins, without disturbing them.

[moof]

4. The way his wife and friends supported him was very moving.

It doesn't seem likely that a professor would be accomadated to any where near that degree today.

However a mental case with the right connections can be accomadated all the way into the whitehouse.

[Droopy]

5. That movie can send the wrong message to the mentally ill.

It shows the guy having side affects to the medication he's on. He stops taking the medication and somehow figures out a way to live a somewhat normal life. Part of the guy's genius is that he figures out a way to deal with schizophrenia without the aid of drugs or therapy.

Most people who have that severe of a mental illness have to be on medication for the rest of their lives. There is no other way out for them. Also, the drugs that they have to treat schizophrenia are much better now than at the time the movie was set.

I speak from experience here. I have schizoaffective disorder. It's a mixture of schizophrenia and manic depression. I stopped taking my meds one time. After about 4 months I relapsed and had an experience so hellish that I almost killed myself. It makes that stuff the main character goes through look like a walk in the park. I created a whole different paranoid reality in my head. I was totally divorced from reality. The hallucinations were so real that there was no telling me different, not even from the people closest to me. The only thing that has ever helped me is drug therapy and I've accepted that I'll be on it for the rest of my life.