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Review

Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) again directs Gwyneth Paltrow in this adaptation of David Auburn’s play. The elegant writing offers the viewer a fascinating glimpse at madness, genius and the dynamics of love and trust. In the first scene, Catherine (Paltrow) is seen conversing with her dead father Robert (Anthony Hopkins,) and thus begins a tautly constructed series of revelatory flashback sequences that peel away the layers of a father and daughter relationship plagued by schizophrenia and the urge to prove a hypothesis concerning prime numbers. Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) is Catherine’s friend-turned lover who both supports and doubts her at every turn. Claire (Hope Davis) arrives from New York as the older sister who tries to put order in Catherine’s almost irrational and tortured life. The close symbiotic relationship of Robert and Catherine is powered by Hopkins’ extremely effective supporting role as a turbulent madman who at times can be very gentle with his younger daughter and protégé. Catherine is also a mathematician like her father, but is she brilliant? What is a family drama for almost two thirds of the film turns into an ambiguous mystery that solves itself by the end of the third act. Although a mathematical equation is at the heart of this drama, the audience is never exposed to tedious explanations or explorations of theoretical postulates. Proof works on a number of levels simultaneously, asking us to examine the proof of one’s love for each other, proof of one’s sanity, proof of one’s existence.

 -- Max Brinck