A CURIOUS MATH EXERCISE

PROOF
Directed by John Madden; written by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller, based on Auburn’s play With: Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis, and Roshan Seth. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, language, and drug references. Running time: 99 minutes



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

David Auburn adapted his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof for the screen, with direction in the talented hands of Oscar-nominated John Madden and the acting done by a stellar cast that includes Oscar-winners Anthony Hopkins and Gwyneth Paltrow. Unfortunately, despite these impeccable credentials, the film ends up less than the sum of its parts.

Paltrow, for her part, delivers a riveting performance as Catherine, the younger daughter of Anthony Hopkins’s math genius Robert. Robert is a former professor at a prestigious Chicago college whose career has been cut short by the disquieting flip side of his mathematical genius—madness. Catherine has been the recipient of his gift of genius but is suspected of carrying the same propensity for mental instability. Catherine has been Robert’s caretaker during his years of decline that coincides with the very same time for her genius to be most productive. As the film opens, Robert has just died, but he will appear in flashbacks. Mental illness has been effectively portrayed numerous times by actors doing and saying strange things—flamboyantly showing the character’s illness as Geoffrey Rush did in his Oscar-winning performance in Shine. Paltrow spends nearly the entire film with her face a mask of mental disturbance, as if she is a hairbreadth from a complete breakdown. She does say and do a few things that definitely throw her sense of reality into question, but this just serves to emphasize the emotional turmoil that we see so clearly on her character’s face.

Paltrow’s Oscar-worthy performance is nearly matched by Hope Davis as Catherine’s pragmatic, yet self-centered older sister Claire. She has returned to Chicago from New York City, intending to efficiently tidy up all the family’s loose ends—including her sister—in about three days so that she can get back to her normal life. That Claire acts like she has full legal authority to take charge of her father’s estate despite being AWOL for his declining years and has little empathy for Catherine makes her Catherine’s primary antagonist. Like many siblings, Claire dispenses selfish cruelty under the guise of rational concern.

The other foil for Catherine is Robert’s former graduate student Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), a new member of the college faculty. We meet Hal shortly after the opening credits as he scours for some flicker of residual genius the multitudinous notebooks into which Robert jotted, doodled, and strung together mathematical symbols. Hal is an eccentric academic who plays in an all-geek math rock band, and, eventually, his goofiness breaks through Catherine’s reluctance, allowing him to become her lover. Gyllenhaal, who played a high school kid in 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, seems much too young to play this role. The backstory sets Hal as Robert’s graduate student right when Robert began spending his time flailing away at his notebooks in semiseclusion with Catherine, who made sure the essential daily tasks got done. Robert would not have been able to continue on the faculty and act as his advisor. Perhaps more importantly, Hal totally lacks the gravitas and ambition that goes along with being a member of a college faculty, regardless of goofiness and eccentricity.

The film’s title comes first from a mathematical equation or proof found in a notebook that Catherine lets Hal find. Later it refers to what is needed to establish to whom to attribute authorship—Catherine or her late father. It certainly muddies the water that Catherine makes contradictory claims. Ultimately, it refers to how to tell if love is or is not true. The audience never sees what is in the notebook and is therefore unable to judge how much it looks alike or different from the other writings by Robert. We don’t sense that Hal’s ambition might motivate duplicity. Catherine’s simmering mental tumult makes her an unreliable protagonist. We don’t know what to believe. Their intimacy seems more a spontaneous need satisfaction than love. We are not sure that either belongs in a relationship—let alone a relationship with each other. So the audience is not sure whether they should care about who created the proof and whether the two young lovers end up with each other or not. This is the crux of the films failing. The result is that a mesmerizing and powerful piece of devastating theater has become a thoroughly watchable, technically proficient, but curious piece of mediocre filmmaking.  

 

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