Proof by David Auburn - 9.4 out of 10

Proof by David Auburn
9.4 out of 10


Proof is a splendid film, which has received impressive reviews from Time, Variety and a few other publications, while the Rolling Stone and The New Yorker have been dissatisfied with the adaptation of the play for the big screen.

Gwyneth Paltrow is impressive as Catherine,  the main character of the motion picture, in spite of her recent unpopular image, as the patron of Goop, an outfit with exorbitant prices for bizarre, sometimes otherworldly offerings.
Catherine is the daughter of a genius mathematician, Robert aka Anthony Hopkins, a man who by the age of 23 has revolutionized three scientific domains with his spectacular work and discoveries.

Early on, we see the young woman discussing with her parent, who wants to celebrate her birthday, although he says that she should better go out with friends, people of her age, to which she retorts that in order to have people take you out, you must first have friends.
It is clear she has no friends and she does not like her sister and when they discuss how lunatics never ask the question of their sanity, Catherine is puzzled because her father just toyed with it and he is crazy...

But he has also been...dead for a week and the audience understands that there are some issues about the balance of the daughter, who may have inherited the genius of her father, but also some of the mental instability.
Harold Dobbs aka Jake Gyllenhaal is the student who looks through the papers of the late mathematician, to see if there is something that could help him in his career and Catherine is suspicious,  perhaps paranoid, that he may try to steal some document form the house.

She looks through his backpack, where there is nothing, but when a notebook falls from his jacket, she is quick to call the police to report a robbery.
Nonetheless, when the young man reads the notes, it becomes clear that this no new discovery that is smuggled, but a sentimental document, in which the father is very grateful to his daughter:

'The fact that Catherine is taking care of me has saved my life...I would have died in an institution' words to that effect.

We learn that this is a fabulous woman, she is not only extremely intelligent, she is also generous and unselfish, she has given up her life in order to care for the parent who had lost his mind.
As she would say at the eulogy at the funeral, he had believed for some time that aliens are trying to communicate with him...she took books from the library by the carload, only to discover he was not reading them.

Catherine and Harold become very intimate and look like they would fall in love with each other...perhaps they will.
However, an event casts a shadow and could potentially damage beyond repair the intimacy or incipient love.

When Harold reads The Proof, he is overwhelmed,but does not seem to believe his new friend when she claims to have written it.
It is a question of handwriting, the extraordinarily sophisticated, incomprehensible nature of the glorious mathematics involved, her having abandoned school...

Therefore, the heroine is devastated by this disappointment, and even thinks that the lover had only tried to seduce her, in order to gain access to some exclusive, precious notes of her late parent.
Proof is a wonderful film, although it seemed unlikely to offer such rewards, given the subject and premise.