A brilliant madness
(DVD)

Originally broadcast as part of the television series The American experience.

Special features: commentary ; interview with John Nash ; more information on schizophrenia.

Director of photography, Peter Donahue ; editor, Karen Schmeer ; composer, Tom Phillips.

Narrator, Liev Schreiber.

Commentary: John Nash, Harold Kuhn, Felix Browder, Herta Newman, Sylvia Nasar, Mel Hausner, Paul Samuelson, Donald Newman, Peter Weiden, Louis Sass.

This tells the story of mathematician John Nash. Called "the most remarkable mathematician of the second half of the century", Nash suffered a devastating breakdown at the age of thirty. He suddenly claimed that aliens were sending him messages, became obsessed with secret numbers and saw conspiracies all around him. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Nash spent a decade in and out of mental hospitals, surviving with the support of his wife and former colleagues. During that time, a mathematical proof he'd written at the age of twenty became a foundation of modern economics. Sometime in the 1980s, he gradually began to recover. In 1994, Nash capped his remarkable return from madness by winning the Nobel Prize.

Not rated.

DVD

Closed-captioned.