How
many of you who have seen Cecil B DeMille’s The
Ten Commandments? Well, not many in
my generation born in the then Madras to lower middle class TamBrahm parents (if
such a categorization existed in the 1950s) would have missed it. To me, that
was the movie that introduced me to Christianity (for good or bad), though the portion
of the epic as portrayed in the movie itself was pre-Christianity.
To
this day, when I have gone beyond 60 years of existence, I cannot see Moses
except as Charlton Heston, not even in disguise. There is no way. Likewise, I cannot see Kattabomman as anyone but Sivaji Ganesan garishly made up. This is a disease. It is like
what I saw in the following dappled picture.
I
saw the picture in the book Phantoms in
the Brain by V S Ramachandran. The things is, as I understand it, it may
take you many minutes of poring over the speckles before you recognize a
definitive shape, the “aha” moment. But once this moment has passed, I believe
from personal experience of opening up the picture a thousand times at any time
of the day, under stressful and or stress-free situations, you cannot help the
Dalmatian foraging under a tree snapping
into immediate focus. I cannot get the dog out of the picture. Good luck to you.
I
believe this is pretty much same thing for me about Moses and Heston.
Now,
I shift from the 1960s to 2015. I have not seen the movie A Beautiful Mind. No, it is not that I am not interested in the
human interest side of notable people. No, it is not that I am not interested
in math per se. It is just that I
have come to prefer to read vis-à-vis see. Yet, I have not read the biography
on Nash, penned by Sylvia Nasar. I have no excuses.
But,
I have read upon his work and how that has been seminal, uniting fields so
different that boggles the mind – like economics and the theory of evolution (Evolutionary
Stable Strategy). I have seen his photos many times, much before every
newspaper and its competitor splashed them in their obituary for this genius.
So, all said and done, I have “known” John Nash (at infinite removes),
“understood” him in the thinnest laymanesque sense, and appreciated him, fully
and truly, though from a distance. Though I feel slightly out-of-the-loop, so
to say, that I have not read Nasar’s account of the genius’s life, I am
thrilled that I have not seen the movie.
I
will explain the bit about not seeing the movie. Every piece I have read on
Nash after his death in an accident, and I have read more than my fair share –
obits and ersatz obits from NYT, Washington Post, The Economist, The Guardian, HuffPo,
The Hindu, TOI, Hindustan Times – and I mean EVERY piece, mentions that Nash
was played by Russell Crowe in the movie.
This
is where my problem starts. Given my history of equating Moses and Heston, had
I seen the movie, I feel certain that I would have replaced Nash with Crowe in
my mind. How can I be sure? Look, every single one of the writers who have
written on Nash over the past few days must have seen the movie (some after his
death, just to get material for the piece – who has the time to do research at
this time of crisis, deadlines?). What I had apprehended for myself appears to
have happened to all these writers.
Please
try denying that Crowe is irrelevant to Nash, he does not add an iota of heft
to anything written on Nash. True, the movie spread awareness among the general
public about a genius who easily straddled math and economics but also had to
face a number of internal demons. This is the human interest side of this
fascinating story. But, any one of the Hollywood’s heavily made-up sculpted
faces could have done the job. Crowe just lucked out. That is all.
CROWE’S
NAME IS A MISFIT IN ANYTHING WRITTEN ON NASH OUTSIDE OF THE CONTEXT OF THE
MOVIE IN WHICH THE FORMER PLAYED THE LATTER. Ask yourself; is Heston relevant
to the story of the Bible?
Now,
what happened with Moses and Heston has no chance of happening to me with Nash
and Crowe. All because I have not seen the movie. It is just like I never read
Ramachandran’s book, had not seen the speckled picture and did not undergo the
Road-to-Damascus transformation.
For
me, Moses to Heston does not jibe with Nash to Crowe. That is for the good.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
4 comments:
Yes, to me also Moses is Charlton Heston. It could b nobody else. For many Ben Kingsley is Gandhi There was even a poster few months ago with Kingsley's pic in it (instead of MKG). But with Moses we dont know how he looked. But with Gandhi, Nash etc ? Are they more ' near' so that we can relate to them more easily. ??
Could be pala ... but MKG, Nash et al are not so far away, at least not as far as Moses for any and everyone of us. This was one of the reasons I mentioned Kattabomman; as legend has it he stood up to the English in the 17th century or so. That too was far, far away.
My understanding is our times are so pathetically shallow, our ideas can be shaped by and only by what you see in movies. Not only that - the stuff in the movies become unassailable truths. I remember how it was with Dan Brown's novel on the Church.
The actor overshadows the protagonist. OK, Crowe tweeted because during the course of shooting for the movie and getting involved in the character (method acting?) he did come to feel for the personalities, Nash and his wife. But, why should those tweets be echoed by the article? And, it was echoed. That too was pathetic.
Thanks for coming back so early. I apprecaite it.
Raghu
I've not seen Beautiful Mind but definitely Ten Commandments, there are many movies where you associate the actor potraying with a mythological character. It happened to me in the case of Ramayana and Mahabharata
Yes Balu and I mentioned Kattabomman in that context only. For Many NTR was Krishna and vice versa. The difference in A Beautiful Mind is Nash (now, was) flesh and blood and I saw no role for Crowe
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