Proof is based on David Auburn's prize-winning play of the same name - one of the few plays I’ve seen on Broadway. It stars the fair Gwyneth Paltrow as the daughter of a famous dead mathematician, who is played in flashbacks by Anthony Hopkins.
The “proof” of the title is a mathematical theorem that Paltrow’s character (Catherine) may or may not have written, but there is also the question of proving whether she wrote it. Catherine is either a genius or she is slowly going mad, as her father did at her age. Either possibility is alluring, particularly to a student of her father's played by a scruffy and sincere Jake Gyllenhaal. (Years ago a friend of mine suggested that we might try to meet nice, smart boys by hanging out in the math department at Columbia University; if any of them looked like Jake Gyllenhaal, she may have been on to something.)
Catherine fits squarely in the tradition of great misunderstood artists, which is why she gets away with her volatile behavior. The story is a psychological mystery played out in flashbacks, but its various strands – the chronicle of a gifted child, the process of grieving for a deceased parent, the burden of a parent’s legacy, the dynamics of sibling relationships – never really develop.
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