Proof

Proof (Director: John Madden)

The not-a-football-broadcaster Madden has actually had a fairly long career beginning in television in the eighties. His first theatrical release was Ethan Frome, and then he did Mrs. Brown, a movie that got Judi Dench an Oscar nomination. But Madden's breakout was Shakespeare in Love, which won Best Picture in 1998 along with a slew of others (where Dench won the Oscar, as did Gwyneth Paltrow). His last film was the critically-drubbed Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Proof is based on the play by David Auburn, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rebecca Miller.

Math! Whether it's John Nash in A Beautiful Mind or Maximillian Cohen in Pi, numbers make mathematicians absolutely crazy. Within the numbers, patterns and secrets to life can be revealed, and you'd better do it in your twenties because if you don't, then you are already a failure. That's the psychology of most of these characters, and it's no wonder they start seeing things. Good thing someone got to Will Hunting at an early age.

Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a promising math genius following in the footsteps of her professor father (Anthony Hopkins), who has recently died. She starts her slow descent into madness, feeling guilty, her dreams seemingly crushed by her dropping out of school to care for him in the last few years (remember, age matters in the math world). Former student Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) is pouring over notebooks in which the old man wrote in his final years, looking for something genius and revolutionary to advance his own math aspirations. Even worse, Catherine's older, polar-opposite sister Claire (Hope Davis) is coming to town for the burial and to try to get her to move from Chicago to New York, as she decides to put the family house up for sale. When Catherine reveals to Hal that there's a notebook locked in a desk upstairs, and that notebook contains a detailed proof on prime numbers that would make all mathematicians hard, she drops the bomb that she's the one who wrote it.

So, therefore, here comes the double-meaning of Proof, where it's a math proof and those close to Catherine want proof that she wrote it. Because she seems to be going crazy, and after all, her father was an incredible math genius. Told in flashback, we get the true story.

I've gotta say, Gwyneth Paltrow turns in a fine, memorable performance. There's no way you could make her ugly, but the filmmakers try to "plain" her down a little bit to look like a withdrawn math nerd. She pulls it off quite well. And there's a heartbreaking scene with Paltrow and Hopkins (who, is he ever not excellent?) that's worth the price of admission. It's a fairly brisk film, not concerned with adding about 20-30 minutes of did-she-or-didn't-she over-the-top mayhem. It's very good.