Sorry, I didn't mean to say that US culture is too prominent in Hollywood movies, but that the US culture itself is greatly skewed by the lens of Hollywood. There are exceptions, but it usually hammers on a handful of themes, and rarely allows stories that run counter to its sensibilities.
For example, in the recent Welcome to Marwen film, the attackers are all white, and one has a neo-Nazi tattoo. In the real incident the movie was based on, one of the attackers was black, and none had neo-Nazi tattoos.
A second example is the invented racist fix in a boxing match, where, again, the white boxer is shown as unfairly being selected as the winner of the match, despite incompetent compared to the black boxer. But in the real fight, most everyone, including the black boxer, agrees the match and outcome was fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Lawsuit
In the case of historical movies, this bias is easy to spot (except when it comes to the selection of which parts of history to show). But in fictional stories, it's harder to complain, yet the narrative pushing is just as strong.
I just watched the movie last night for the 2nd time, thinking that I was in for a completely fictionalized story, because I had uncritically accepted sensational blog titles like the one you linked to.
Turns out, the movie is a rather good depiction of the struggles that Nash went through. He published a groundbreaking paper as a grad student, married Alicia, suffered from schizophrenia, and learned how to manage it, eventually going back to Princeton as a damaged but wiser man, and worthy of a Nobel prize in economics. All of these major points were covered in the movie.
Nash himself found the movie to be close to reality, except that it may have suggested that he went back on newer antipsychotics--see the interview he gave to a Nobel reporter 10 years ago[1]. In fact, the movie was much more fair to his point of view than he admitted in the interview.
Some details of his life were left out, but his reputation as the "Ghost of Fine Hall" was preserved. I see the film as a fair presentation of his life, especially compared to the Hollywood standard for "true stories"--see The Hurricane, American Gangster, JFK, etc.
Hacker Cinema
2 comments on Hacker News
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that US culture is too prominent in Hollywood movies, but that the US culture itself is greatly skewed by the lens of Hollywood. There are exceptions, but it usually hammers on a handful of themes, and rarely allows stories that run counter to its sensibilities.
For example, in the recent Welcome to Marwen film, the attackers are all white, and one has a neo-Nazi tattoo. In the real incident the movie was based on, one of the attackers was black, and none had neo-Nazi tattoos.
A second example is the invented racist fix in a boxing match, where, again, the white boxer is shown as unfairly being selected as the winner of the match, despite incompetent compared to the black boxer. But in the real fight, most everyone, including the black boxer, agrees the match and outcome was fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)#Lawsuit
In the case of historical movies, this bias is easy to spot (except when it comes to the selection of which parts of history to show). But in fictional stories, it's harder to complain, yet the narrative pushing is just as strong.
I just watched the movie last night for the 2nd time, thinking that I was in for a completely fictionalized story, because I had uncritically accepted sensational blog titles like the one you linked to.
Turns out, the movie is a rather good depiction of the struggles that Nash went through. He published a groundbreaking paper as a grad student, married Alicia, suffered from schizophrenia, and learned how to manage it, eventually going back to Princeton as a damaged but wiser man, and worthy of a Nobel prize in economics. All of these major points were covered in the movie.
Nash himself found the movie to be close to reality, except that it may have suggested that he went back on newer antipsychotics--see the interview he gave to a Nobel reporter 10 years ago[1]. In fact, the movie was much more fair to his point of view than he admitted in the interview.
Some details of his life were left out, but his reputation as the "Ghost of Fine Hall" was preserved. I see the film as a fair presentation of his life, especially compared to the Hollywood standard for "true stories"--see The Hurricane, American Gangster, JFK, etc.
[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=429