Honored with a Pulitzer Prize as the Best Drama of 2001, "Proof" has had
stellar runs in New York, London, and numerous regional theaters (Arena
Stage offered a moving production recently). David Auburn's play has now
received serious filmic treatment with a screenplay co-written by the
playwright, a starry cast, and the ministrations of English director John
Madden (Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love). Earnest as this effort is,
however, the film version falls short of its theatrical impact (the film is
rated PG-13 for mature themes and is showing at area theaters). |
Storyline: The twenty-five year old daughter
of a famous mathematician has spent five years caring for her father as
mental illness progressively incapacitated him. On the eve of his funeral
she has to cope not only with his death, but with the concern of her sister,
the attention of one of her father's graduate students and the lingering
presence of her father in their Chicago home. She may have inherited some of
her father's genius but she fears she may have also inherited his "tendency
to instability."
The cast and director struggle hard to make this
familial/intellectual story, significantly told in flashbacks, work. Though
its setting is the University of Chicago neighborhood and Chicago-area
sites, most of the film was shot in England. The on-location shooting
in the Windy City is basically used for "opening up" the action, a common
trait when one-set plays are converted into films. While this opening up
adds some visual interest and permits us to see the troubled Catherine
outside the confines of her Southside home (a handsome set, by the way), it
adds little to the drama.
There is, of course, a built-in dilemma with
theater pieces converted to motion pictures. The former primordially depend
on the word (and the conviction of the actors who deliver them) while the
latter incorporate words, yes, but deliver them coated with imagery, with
photography that mimics the real world. Proof may be a thoughtful drama on
paper, but this cinematic version loses a dimension. The transfer to the
screen is made the more difficult because this is a play which treats,
however lightly, ideas and mathematical concepts, whims of the mind, for
which there is no concrete equivalent on celluloid.
Gwyneth Paltrow has assayed "serious" parts
before (as in the recent film Sylvia, based on the life of Sylvia Plath),
and she certainly knows this role: she was the lead in the London stage
version, also directed by John Madden. Her Catherine gives off some of the
right vibes of the disaffected, neurasthenic young woman, but her modelish
looks tend to work against her; it is hard to believe she is truly buried in
painful self-examination (perhaps the movie's prevalence of close-ups is at
work here, imagery not feasible on stage). Anthony Hopkins as her
mathematician father is effective in his quieter moments, but he can be
disconcertingly abrupt and declamatory, as if he were playing to the back
seats rather than to the close-up camera. Jake Gyllenhaal as Hal Dobbs is
too studly to appear nerdish and seems to be more callow than intellectual.
The fine Hope Davis makes the insensitive "heavy" Claire more nuanced than
expected in the thankless role of the one who just doesn't understand.
With Madden's "Proof," we may sense some of the
ache of its characters, but we don't really succeed at getting at their
minds.
Written by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller.
Directed by John Madden. Cinematography by Alwin H. Kuchler. Original Music
by Stephen Warbeck. Editing by Mick Audsley. Production Design by Alice
Normington. Principal
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis.
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