Proof

The daughter of a brilliant but mentally disturbed mathematician, recently deceased, tries to come to grips with her possible inheritance: his insanity. Complicating matters are one of her father's ex-students who wants to search through his papers and her estranged sister who shows up to help settle his affairs.

AMG Plot:A woman struggles to come to terms with the potentially dangerous legacy of her late father in this drama based on the award-winning stage play by David Auburn. Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant and well-known mathematician. While Robert's skill in the world of numbers still appears to be strong, his grip on reality begins to slip away, and as Robert descends into madness, Catherine begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father's mental illness along with his mathematical genius. After Robert's passing, Catherine is confronted by Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), a gifted but zealous student of Robert's who wants to look through the late man's notes in hopes of finding his last great work. While Catherine is hesitant to look too deeply into her father's work for fear of what it might suggest about her own future, she allows Hal to do so, and when one notebook reveals a mathematical proof of potentially historic proportions, it sets off shock waves in more ways than one. Proof also stars Hope Davis as Catherine's well-meaning but shallow sister, who doubts Catherine's ability to take care of herself. Paltrow had previously played Catherine to stellar reviews during the original play's run in London's West End. — Mark Deming

AMG Review: John Madden's adaptation of David Auburn's award-wining Proof retains much of the work's outstanding dialogue. There is a lack of emotional immediacy to the film, but that has more to do with the characters being from a highly academic world. These are people who are always attempting to be exact and clear, and much of the drama of Gwyneth Paltrow's character — a part she played on stage in London — comes simply from the fact that she does not want to face in clear and exact terms what she is feeling. The trick to the presenting this material is maintaining the balance between the characters. The audience has to constantly wonder which of these characters they can believe. Madden does a fine job of keeping this element of the play in tact, even if Jake Gyllenhaal's Hal tips the scale by being played a bit too nice. Madden also does not "open up" the play so much as go deeper into it. He does a fine job editing the film in order to reveal information in ways one is unable to on the stage. This is a fine film with solid performances. — Perry Seibert