Cinema Experts

“If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line; try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it... better.”
"Proof", the excellent play by David Auburn, was one of the best things in the New York stage in recent memory. Part of the attraction was the intelligent subject matter, math science, and how it connected the four characters one got to meet. The casting was an ideal one, Mary Louise Parker, Larry Briggman, Johanna Day and Ben Shenkman, playing Cahterine, Robert, Claire and Hal, respectively.
Mr. Auburn and Rebecca Miller, a movie director, herself, took the task of adapting "Proof" for the screen. The result, directed by John Madden, opens the play in cinematic terms, no small undertaking in presenting the movie to a wider audience who might not be interested in science, and much less in the advanced math that plays an important role in the proceedings.
Catherine, the 27 year old, at the center of the film, is a woman who has stayed behind to take care of her aging father, a man much esteemed in academic circles, who is suffering from, perhaps, a neurological illness that is killing him slowly. Catherine has, in a way, sacrificed her life in order to see that Robert spends his last days at home instead of at an institution.
The death of the father brings Claire home. This woman, who lives in New York, wants to get rid of everything connected with her father. She even has made plans for Catherine to move from Chicago to be near each other in New York, where things are much better. To complicate things, Harold, the nerdy math student, finds a hidden notebook that might contain a discovery that will revolutionize math. The only problem is the proof might not have been the dead man's own creation.
"Proof" works as a film because of Mr. Madden's direction. We are kept involved in what is going on because we have been won by Catherine, the wounded woman trying to live her life without having to tend to a sick man. Catherine love for math, in a way, makes her realize her place is in the same institution where her father made mathematical discoveries as she will be following his steps.
Gwyneth Paltrow makes an excellent Catherine, a role she had played on the London stage. Paltrow is a welcome presence in the movie because of the intelligence she projects when working with a good director like John Madden. Hope Davis, another excellent actress, plays Claire, the materialistic sister who has arrived and who wants to transform the frumpy Catherine and mold her to her own taste.
Davis has accustomed us to expect a valuable contribution to any film in which she plays. As Claire, she clearly understand who this character she is portraying really is.
Anthony Hopkins has only a few good moments on the screen. But it's Jake Gyllenhaal who deserves special compliment for taking on a role with nothing to hang on to, not even a stereotype, and turning it into a real person with passion, warmth and weakness. Finally, the script is just great as the characters talk just the way people talk, rather than deliver smart-Alex punchlines every five minutes. Maybe for some movies, that's alright. But "Proof" demands and deserves a lot more… 9/10