"Proof" came from a stage play and that is rather apparent at times when you watch the film. What's most odd about it, however, is that Gwyneth Paltrow made her stage debut in the role she plays in the film and in the film she seems rather miscast. She is obviously acting. Maybe it was too difficult for her to drop her stage work from her performance here. Or maybe she's just a one-hit-wonder and "Shakespeare in Love" is a fluke rather than a portent of things to come. (Although, I still liked her in "Duets.")

Paltrow plays a young woman of 27 whose father was a renowned mathematician. She has dropped her studies in the last few years to take care of him as he descends into a life of senility. After his death, she finds herself in flux, worried that perhaps her father's mental illness is also her fate while she contends with a pushy sister, who wants to take her to New York and care for her, and a young mathematician, her father's former student, bent on looking through the old man's recent notebooks in search of some sign of the great man's once genius.

While the story here is quite compelling, it is nearly always due to the performances of Jake Gyllenhaal and Hope Davis, the former student and the sister, respectively. Gyllenhaal is wonderful, adopting a scruffy beard to look a few years older than his age, in that attempt that many young men make apparently to appear more mature. Gyllenhaal doesn't have a whole lot to work with in his role but he still manages to keep it all quite compelling. Davis, meanwhile, is a powerhouse here, taking a role that others would have made typical and irritating and turning it into a character that we truly see the good intentions within and develop an understanding of her concerns here. She deserves much kudos for her work in the part.

In the end, "Proof" seems much more suited to the stage than the movies. But lets face it, the movies are much more accessible to audiences than a play ever could be. Eventually, only this serves as a good enough reason for the feature film version of the piece to exist. Hey, at least they didn't turn it into a movie about physics and weapons of mass destruction instead of math.

Notes:

Also with Anthony Hopkins.

Directed by John Madden, who directed Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love."

Written by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller, based on his play.

Filmed in and set around Chicago.

At least the fifth film with this single word title.

The film debuted at Venice and Madden was nominated for an award there.

Viewed in Austin in November, 2005.

Report Card

Script: A-

Acting: A-

Cinematography\Lighting: C

Special Effects\Make Up: C

Music: B+

Final Grade: B+