Beautiful minds, tortured minds, lost minds
In our small world of little Zimbabwe, we too have lost a beautiful mind. Many people think it was lost somewhere between 2008 and 2017, prompting other beautiful minds to step in to save a nation. Others think it was lost in the year 2000, when that mind failed to operationalise land reform into a truly transformative economic programme.
RUSSEL Crowe’s portrayal of John Nash in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” has to be one of the greatest biographical cinematic performances of all time.
It is right up there with Denzel Washington’s take on Frank Lucas in “American Gangster”.
I admire movie-makers and actors. They are walking, talking art.
Tafataona Mahoso told our junior class in the Division of Mass Communication at Harare Polytechnic back in 2001 that the fascination with celluloid heroes could be understood within the context of commercialised suspension of disbelief. He was right. But I like movies all the same. Not
C-Grade stuff like the “Wakanda” comic book regurgitate that has gripped the world. That is genuine commercialised suspension of disbelief stuff.
I am more in awe of true artistic expression than special effects computer-generated voodoo.
Which is why I think Mr Washington has a beautiful mind. Apart from “American Gangster”, consider “John Q”, consider “Fences”, consider “Remember the Titans”, consider “Glory”, consider “Hurricane”, consider “Malcom X”, consider “Antwone Fisher”, consider “The Great Debaters”, consider “He Got Game”, consider “Cry Freedom”.
The list of superlative performances is long.
Would it be heresy for me to say Mr Washington has never made a bad movie? That some of his works are just better than others?
Yes, Mr Washington has a beautiful mind.
Russel Crowe on the other hand is a likeable-quirky-tough-soft Mr Washington wannabe.
He promised good things in “L.A Confidential”, lived up to the promise in “Gladiator”, hit his highest point as a lead in “A Beautiful Mind”, and complemented Mr Washington well in “American Gangster”.
He has trundled along and tried to live true to the promise in “The Next Three Days”, but it just has not been happening.
But that is not my concern today. My concern is “A Beautiful Mind”.
“A Beautiful Mind” tells the story of Nobel Laureate in Economics John Nash and his battle with paranoid schizophrenia, which almost cost the world revolutionary insights in the field of game theory.
The real John Nash graduated from university at just age 19, with both a BS and MS in Mathematics.
But the following years were to be hellish.
Around 1959, Nash started believing that all men who wore red ties were part of a communist plot against him.
He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
The experts say a person with this mental illness has “fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, and usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present”.
Because of his intellectual brilliance, his eccentricities went largely accepted, even as he declined treatment for his condition.
As a result of the illness, Nash saw himself as some sort of messenger with a special purpose for humanity. He believed he had “supporters and opponents and hidden schemers, along with a feeling of being persecuted and searching for signs representing divine revelation”.
Nash died in 2015. I don’t know if that beautiful mind had been cured of its illness.
The world lost another beautiful mind last week.
At the age of 21, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and was told he had two years to live.
He was to live another 55 years, dying last week at the age of 76.
Unable to move his body and only able to speak through a computer, he unleashed his powerful mind to deconstruct the universe via the field of theoretical physics.
He could have become a paranoid schizophrenic, convinced that there was a conspiracy around him.
There never was any bitterness expressed about his condition. He accepted it and did not let it define him.
The world loses beautiful minds every day. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t. Either way, it’s always tragic.
In our small world of little Zimbabwe, we too have lost a beautiful mind.
Many people think it was lost somewhere between 2008 and 2017, prompting other beautiful minds to step in to save a nation.
Others think it was lost in the year 2000, when that mind failed to operationalise land reform into a truly transformative economic programme.
Others yet insist that beautiful mind was lost in 1980 when we all failed to see that tri-mingling personality, the ruling party and the State was fatal to nationhood and national aspirations.
Those with the dimmest view will say it was never a beautiful mind, and that from February 1924 to November 2017, a selfishness of boundless proportions was being nurtured so that it could exact its strangely vengeful will over millions of souls.
I’m no psychoanalyst, never mind my pet forays into Freudian methods, but methinks we have before us subject matter that would give Sigmund political wet dreams.
I cannot - medically or legally diagnose paranoid schizophrenia.
Whence come the delusions of omnipotence? From which warped cranial streams flow murky thoughts of persecution, conspiracy and ill-deserved comeuppance?
Surely, what makes a full-grown man - more grown than most in this land - think that ‘tis only by the will of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga that he is now an ordinary, private citizen?
Is it, as one gentleman has put it, power denial psychosis, and if it is, is that a medical condition that can be treated by hard science or a political condition that requires a more nuanced intervention?
No, I can’t diagnose paranoid schizophrenia. And I can’t diagnose power denial psychosis. But I sure do know a God complex and megalomania.