What a beautiful post, Celeste. I must add something about Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Honestly, overall I didn't care for the movie - I thought they kind of trivialized schizophrenia in a way. And it bothers me that they wrote a lie into it - that the man it's based on actually cured himself of it with his wife's love. That's not true, and it's not possible. But Russell Crowe, in spite of that, blew me away. And he did it in just one scene. It was a scene where he was looking at himself in the mirror. And he was terrified because he didn't recognize who he saw looking back. And he *nailed* it. I know from that experience, because I've had it myself. Three days after Will was born, post-partum depression rolled over me like a Mack truck. I didn't see it coming. In that hormonal/chemical onslaught, all traces of me were lost. I still remember looking in my bathroom mirror and seeing someone I didn't recognize looking back at me. Do you ever have dreams in which you see yourself in a mirror, but it's a completely different person looking back at you? All my life I had those dreams. But this happened in my waking life. Odd thing - A Beautiful Mind was the first movie I went to see in the theater after Will was born. He was about 8 weeks old. My husband was home and he said, "Why don't you go get out of the house for a while. Go to the beach or see a movie - I've got things covered here." My tradition for years and years was to make a point to see all five Academy Awards nominees (not anymore, but that's another post). I knew I probably didn't have a chance of doing that that year, but I figured I'd pick whichever one was showing and go with that.
Like I say, a lot of the rest of the movie bothered me. But I still can't shake the exact way his face and eyes looked when he was looking in the mirror at himself in that scene. Other actors have done the same kind of scene, I'm sure many times over. But none has left the same impression on me. Had I not been experiencing it myself at the time, I probably wouldn't have fully appreciated it. But I've seen actors try their hand at it since, and none have come close to how perfectly he just got it.
Hell, I remember even saying to Ed around that time, "Do I look different to you?" He said, "In what way?" I said, "My face - does my face look like it's changed somehow?" He just looked at me in an odd way and said, "Well if you mean has having a baby changed your face like it does some women's (we had talked about that in the early months of the pregnancy - that I was afraid it would somehow alter my face in that way it sometimes does), no - it's just the same as it's always been." Yet I saw a completely different person. I saw the person in my subconscious - in my dreams. It was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced.
What's equally incredible about Heath's and Jake's performances, I think, is that they're so damned good, they can take those of us who've never experienced exactly what those characters have experienced and make us believe it is absolutely real. My husband said it today talking about it - "It was like watching a really good documentary." And this is a guy who loves documentaries. In other words, he felt like those characters were real. I'm guessing you haven't experienced clinical depression, Celeste. And yet Russell Crowe could make you feel mental illness in your bones as if it were your own, am I right? THAT'S acting. All of these men are legendary in their craft. And thank goodness they're so young and just beginning. It's like watching Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate at the time it first came out. His whole career is yet to unfold. Like these men's now. I can't wait to watch that happen.
