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Proof (2005)

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From Time Out London

A certain schizophrenia seems to afflict Hollywood in its portrayals of genius – while often stiff with respect and awe for its subject, at the same time it’s prepared to stoop to caricature to dramatise identifiable human qualities in its mysterious object of enquiry. John ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Madden’s ‘Proof’ is a case in point.This ambitious but unsatisfying screen adaptation of David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning play, which Madden mounted at the Donmar Warehouse a couple of years back, gives us two geniuses for the price of one. The more orthodox of the two is Robert (Anthony Hopkins), a once-brilliant Chicago mathematician suffering the maddening indignity of Alzheimer’s, but still hoping to make a world-shattering breakthrough in Numbers Theory. Hopkins’ ham performance – as he swings from Lear-like rages to sweet blooms of childlike enthusiasm at his paper-strewn desk – reassuringly renders Robert as yer classic Hollywood brainiac. The other is his ‘conflicted’ daughter Catherine (a mannered but affecting Gwyneth Paltrow, reprising the successful theatrical debut she made at the Donmar), resentful after abandoning a potentially glittering academic career to care for him. The film anatomises their relationship in flashback, while in the present Catherine contends with her father’s ghost, her super-organised elder sister (the excellent Hope Davis) and sweet if distrustful maths nerd Jake Gyllenhaal, who’s golddigging through her father’s proofs. Sadly, the impact of the clever parallelogram of emotional and philosophical concerns in Auburn and Rebecca Miller’s screenplay is deadened by the director’s overly literal – mechanical – cinematic interpretation.

Author: WH

Time Out London Issue 1851: February 8-15 2006

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