At the beginning of the academic year, college students and faculty may hope for a film exalting academia, but they are seldom satisfied. The recent movie Proof, directed by John Madden, is hence much appreciated. In the tradition of Good Will Hunting (1997) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), the story in Proof deals with mathematicians. When the film begins, a very distressed Catherine (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) appears to be having a conversation with a mellow professor (played by Anthony Hopkins). However, the professor died a few days earlier of an aneurysm at the age of sixty-three. The funeral and reception are to occur on the following day. Throughout the film, which is based on the stageplay by David Auburn that won a Pulitzer and a Tony, there are flashbacks to provide context. Hal (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), the professor's onetime math grad student, soon emerges; a not so distinguished teacher at a college somewhere in Chicago, he has been upstairs in the late professor's study, looking at his notebooks. Hal indicates that the notebooks appear interesting and may have something of value. Although the good professor made an important discovery in his mid-twenties that revolutionized three fields of academic endeavor, he burned out shortly thereafter and was kept on the math faculty at the University of Chicago despite his inability to think beyond his discovery. Indeed, the point is made several times in the film that the greatest discoveries in mathematics are made by those in their early and mid-twenties; thereafter, they decline in intellectual power. (Bertrand Russell experienced a similar math burnout from coauthoring Principia Mathematica, though he was very lucid in matters of philosophy and politics in later years.) However, after the professor achieved fame, he was considered to be a mental case, and Catherine cared for him during the final five years of his life. Fearing that Hal is leaving the house with a purloined manuscript, she grabs his backpack, recovers a notebook that Hal has indeed hidden, and calls the police to report a robbery in progress. Hal reveals that the notebook was a diary that he intended to wrap as a present for her, so she lets him go. When the police arrive, she reports that there was no robbery after all, but they barge into the house to ensure that she is safe, whereupon she abusively demands that they leave. The following morning, Catherine's domineering sister Claire (played by Hope Davis) arrives from New York with quite an agenda. She plans to sell the house back to the university, pack up the various possessions, and take her sister to live in New York where she can be "cared for." Claire believes that Catherine is as mentally disabled as was their late father. (Indeed, ads about Proof strangely suggest that Catherine is herself worried about a genetic mental defect, though the film reveals that she is just recovering from the normal stress of long-term care for an invalid and the death of a loved one.) Next, Hal returns to the house, proclaims his love for Catherine, and finds a notebook that has an astounding mathematical proof; he declares his intention to give other math professors a chance to verify his hunch. Although he believes that the proof would further immortalize the late professor, Catherine insists that she is the author. Evidently unaware that she studied math at Northwestern University and possibly collaborated with her father on the proof during a brief period of his lucidity, Hal is ultimately pushed to state that he cannot believe Catherine's authorship claim. Thus betrayed, Catherine is speechless for the next five days. Meanwhile, Hal obtains confirmation from math professors on the importance of the proof, realizes that the proof requires knowledge of mathematical advances of which her father was unaware due to his premature senility, and concludes that Catherine is indeed the author of the proof. As a taxicab loads up, with Catherine and Claire bound for the airport to fly to New York, Hal arrives, relays what he has learned and inferred, but the timing is bad. Catherine responds that he has come too late. But in what obviously must be a feel-good movie, filmviewers will be pleased by what occurs in the final scene, though perhaps puzzled about what will happen to her in the next few years. MH
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