Proof (2005)

I happened to watch this one accidentally. It was a happy accident!At the core of the film lies a daughter's grief for the loss of her father. I could only compare the portrayal to Intersteller's heart-wrenching drama about a father and a daughter trapped in space-time, to underscore how well it has been done. Gwyneth Paltrow has made a fan out of me for her lifelike performance in this movie.Apart from the stellar acting performances of the entire lead cast, the film's narrative structure is most interesting, and original in terms of build-up and climax. The story does not become predictable, and it's only towards the end we understand Catherine's inner struggles to accept that her father is gone. This is a treat to watch. Gyllenhaal and Hopkins also have lived their characters well.Overall, it is masterfully done cinema underlining the best of human emotions.

The Iron Maiden (what else notable has she done but Iron Man in the intervening years?) in a terrific performance as the daughter of a John Nash-like genius schizophrenic mathematician -- a daughter who may have inherited her father's outsized intellect as well as his affliction. We're never sure and neither is the character. Hope Davis is equally terrific as her well-meaning, less talented, clueless, "normal" sister who's trying to help, but paints her sister as crazy like their father and is trying to force her to live life inside a box labeled "crazy". It's a fascinating study of a woman who's a genius and a difficult personality being labeled and treated as though she were not all there. Nobody seems to believe she's sane, not even her. But frankly, the Davis character's over-solicitousness would make anyone doubt their own sanity. The scenes with Paltrow and Davis make you believe they really might be sisters. Their tone is pitch perfect.I thoroughly enjoyed it, but be warned it's not an action movie, or one with an intricate plot. Instead, it examines how genius and insanity often can't be distinguished from each other and might well be two sides of the same coin.

Proof is a movie that has themes on genius and madness wherein a woman struggles to come to terms with the potentially dangerous legacy of her late father.It stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis. It was written by Rebecca Miller, which was based on David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title. John Madden directed the said feature. Catherine is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert, a brilliant and well-known mathematician. While Robert's skill in the world of numbers still appears to be strong, his grip on reality begins to slip away, and as he descends into madness, she begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father's mental illness along with his mathematical genius. After his father's passing, she is confronted by Hal, a gifted but zealous student of Robert's who wants to look through the late man's notes in hopes of finding his last great work. While she is hesitant to look too deeply into her father's work for fear of what it might suggest about her own future, she allows him to do so, and when one notebook reveals a mathematical proof of potentially historic proportions, it sets off shock waves in more ways than one.Intense and compelling, it is an absorbing film that shows the intricacies of the human mind are as complex as a mathematical equation. It is an extraordinary play adaptation about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it. The play, with all of its key surprises and biting exchanges intact, is up there on the screen. But given the depth and fascinating pull of Auburn's writing, that's a good thing as themes of trust, the depth of filial responsibility and concerns about genetic inheritances are explored with intelligence.Added to that,it explores issues of love, trust and family wonderfully through the inner life and ironic wit of Catherine.Paltrow and Hopkins give exceptional performances in a film that intelligently tackles the territory between madness and genius. Davis and Gyllenhaal complete a dream cast. Overall,Proof now joins 1984's Amadeus, 1985's made-for-television version of Death of a Salesman and 1988's Dangerous Liaisons on the list of the best modern movie adaptations in recent years.

A big screen version of a Pulitzer Prize winning stage play,PROOF eventually all too obviously falls victim to it's theatrical origins and ends up as flat and unexceptional with little cinematic qualities.A brilliant but ageing mathematician Robert (Anthony Hopkins), is looked after by his young daughter Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) through serious mental health problems until his death.Catherine has followed in her father's mathematical footsteps,and a former student of her father's,Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) thinks he may have found evidence of products of her father's work in various notebooks.Catherine's sister Claire (Hope Davis) arrives for the funeral,and begins to think her sister is showing signs of mental illness like their father,but it soon emerges that it may be Catherine and not Robert who is responsible for this academic breakthrough, according to further research by Hal in the various notebooks.But it may not be an easy task for her to persuade the University where her father taught and she sporadically attends,about such proof.The operations of maths and mathematicians has not proved to be a particularly exciting subject in cinema, and PROOF is no exception to that rule.Like other titles such as GOOD WILL HUNTING,PI and A BEAUTIFUL MIND,there is a tendency to treat such characters as socially awkward,eccentric and mentally ill to beef up interest in the subject matter,though this veers into caricature and stereotyping.Director John Madden attempts to open up the stage original by way of actual Chicago locations,the addition of superfluous minor characters and some interesting camera movement,but the only really clever moments occur at the very beginning,with a semi-surrealist conversation between Hopkins and Paltrow which climaxes in a darkly amusing and adroit fashion,but there on in is afflicted by slabs of typically pretentious theatrical dialogue,unsympathetic characters and ill-cast actors.The acting on show eventually becomes too strident and over-emphatic at the cost of naturalness;La Paltrow goes through all kinds of emotions like fear,hate,love,sadness,desire,aggression,spite and petulance,without making her mentally fragile character likable or endearing,sometimes dissolving into theatrical histrionics which do not expose themselves well on the big screen.She clearly seems to be trying for another Oscar here as she won several years previously with Madden in Shakespeare IN LOVE,but in the event only received a Golden Globe nomination (which she lost to Felicity Huffman), and tries rather too hard and not too subtly in doing so.Hopkins does not appear that much but performs in his familiar post-Hannibal mode of speaking quietly one moment then bellowing out explosively the next, while Gyllenhall is ineffectual and whiny as Gwynnie's would-be suitor and fellow maths geek.The three principals don't really convince as maths devotees,and there is very little detail of the equations involved,which makes such emoting even less believable.The less academically-inclined main character, played by Davis, actually comes across as the most personable despite some brusque,neurotic,avaricious aspects,and wants to genuinely help her troubled sister.But PROOF's main problem is that the story is not particularly interesting or edifying,a bit like mathematics itself as most of the really important discoveries and revelations on the subject were made thousands of years ago (mainly in Ancient Greece), and any that are made in the modern era come across as slight amendments that cause barely a flicker of interest in the media or the general public.Gwyneth Paltrow has also appeared in the stage version,and that's where it basically belongs,as PROOF is essentially a theatrical and not cinematic experience.RATING:5 and a half out of 10.