Proof
by John Madden
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DVD details
Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hope Davis, Jake Gyllenhaal, Roshan SethDirector: John Madden
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Cinematographer: Alwin Küchler
Composer: Stephen Warbeck
Editor: Mick Audsley
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-14
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax
DVD Reviews of Proof
DVD Review: Youth Absorption Canard Hits Logical Contradiction
Summary: 4 Stars
Outstanding performances, riveting, winding and weaving through family crisis centered on a deceased, enigmatic father figure. I can't give away any more than that. But there is a story about mathematical discovery here, not a bad one; and contrary to what other reviewers have assumed, there are mathematical anecdotes, some proof, the details we're left imagining belong to any number of questions that have been asked about the prime numbers. That is secondary, this movie is about a struggle between the dramatized popular mythos of intellectual productivity; and the catastrophe of American anti-intellectualism. Again, a movie is a byproduct of culture, working people in a contemporary setting who's creative output engenders their own misperceptions--it is not a documentary about mathematics, and the movie construct in consumer idolatry doesn't presume to play umpire: that's a fair criticism, that's a foul ball etc. It's never been just entertainment, it is a medium constantly issuing templates for our common values, presentations weak, true or false about the way people think about and accept reality. Now since that is an irresistible temptation to manufacture, such is the news and public perception of real events, a movie is a commodity which can't be taken at face value--as much as its commercial backing would want us to. On this point, Proof never made it to the local theater here, and then even major chain video rental/retail weren't carrying it.
I had an opportunity a while back, to ask why the movie never came to town, the ticket gal used her walkie-talkie to ask her manager as she tore our tickets for a different movie. The man said it wasn't a decision of the theater's, that it all happened and went down in corporate skyscrapers far away. The mandate: No one would be interested in a story like that, about mathematics of all things. Then I stumbled on it in the other store of a well known video rental on the other end of town, rented it and watched it on a Macintosh G4 with great anticipation. I'd practically made a list of important things to look for, if and when I'd ever get the chance to see it. I can't watch movies on my Winbook XL2 anymore, Microsoft failed me and took away my DVD decoder, even on a Win'98 reformatting. Maybe I should write to them: `Thanks for breaking my DVD, there has been no custodianship of consumer reliability-(hock spoot).' Zero backward compatibility, neither Win'98 or Win'XP will let a less complicated, 16 bit startup.exe file perform its humble task, reinstalling the decoder that was shipped on a CD. I bet you can't even get that first tv tennis game with the sliding barriers and square ball to work on these things. What isn't true in mathematics, is that we can throw away our early understanding and ways of thinking about the science. We can't forget basic addition, nor the heuristics to long division with paper and pencil...though there is some interest in ridding the public school K-12 curriculum of that...and in logic of implication, we cannot, under any circumstances do what is called `denial of the antecedent'. That is effectively walking away from the argument ipso facto, not `straight on through the argument.' Andrew Wiles did not therefore prove nor go anywhere near Fermat's Last Theorem. He tried to deny the Fry antecedent corollary to his elliptic modularity work. Since everybody at the time was too bamboozled to see straight, it was never caught.
I did see a copy of Annals of Mathematics in this movie, happy to report. Gwennyth's gorgeous.
Now, we might ask why there are only two valid forms of modal implication: ponens and tollens, each preceded by the Latin term `modus'--just like `modus operandi'. This would require a level of analysis actually above the sentential logic, a meta-logic. Well, we know you can't drive down a one way street going in the opposite direction, and when there's a sign that says `right turn only', we have to follow that rule too. The logic of proof is like a system of traffic rules, and they are routinely violated by the hot air community. Since the rest of society has abandoned them to their play schools, they get to race around and be naughty any way they please.
A fun contemporary treatise on Logic is "Everything that linguists have always wanted to know about Logic, but were ashamed to ask.", by James D. McCawley, University of Chicago Press, 1981; he was on the faculty of the school filmed in this movie. I guess now we can include the shaming of the mathematicians. He's trying to adlib some humor with his examples in that book, you have to bear with him.
There are actually a lot of books written on the mathematical procedures for `proof'. It is a subject of fascination in its own right, (apart from mysteries of primes or whatever). How is it we `know' a thing? Scientists at AT&T studied Boolean disjunctive form to graph a sort of phase portrait of the Satisfiability Problem; it is like many natural phase behaviors called `critical point' phenomena. Indeed, we do have `flashes of insight', true `Eureka' moments happen, apt description. They've even drawn a picture of it; it does not look like the jar of mayonnaise ('Annie Hall') either...and to be honest...this movie didn't bother to work out some of its bugs with the subject, like where they meant Mersenne Primes, in the name dropping of Sophie Germain.
American films have belabored the insanity of anything mathematical as they have sold a cruel lie to young people and the more seasoned, necessarily more thorough reasoners: that the shelf life of the ephemeral mind which must absorb more and more is less and less; therefore ignore the senile over age 22, who couldn't possibly know what they're talking about. History has proven them wrong in many cases of career contribution over the entire life. Ignore such ignorance at its worst, discouraging others.
Description of Proof
From the acclaimed director of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, PROOF stars Oscar(R) winners Gwyneth Paltrow (Best Actress, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, 1998) and Anthony Hopkins (Best Actor, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991), along with Jake Gyllenhaal (JARHEAD, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) and Hope Davis (ABOUT SCHMIDT). It's a powerful story of a young woman haunted by her father's past and the shadow of her own future. Catherine (Paltrow) has devoted years to caring for her brilliant but mentally unstable father, Robert (Hopkins), a mathematical genius. But when his genius slips away, he leaves behind a mystery that affects her life ... and her own sanity. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play.Elegantly adapted from David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Proof works on so many levels that it shines like a perfected equation. Gwyneth Paltrow previously played her role onstage, and returns here as Catherine, the troubled 27-year-old daughter of Robert, a once-brilliant mathematician (Anthony Hopkins, appearing in flashbacks and imagined visions) who has recently died. What Robert has left behind is an emotionally challenging legacy of genius, mental illness, and unfinished business in the Chicago home where Catherine had cared for him during his erratic final years. Catherine fears she may have inherited her father's unstable condition, and her sister Claire (Hope Davis) arrives from New York with smothering concern and a selfish but well-meaning agenda, while Robert's student and assistant Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) hopes to find lasting proof of Robert's enduring genius in the piles of notebooks he left behind. Steeped in the authentic atmosphere of advanced academia, revelations of love, fear, regret, and potential recovery unfold with such graceful complexity that Proof plays like a thriller, with all the action taking place in the admirable hearts and minds of its characters. The film also has a lot to say about the potential tragedy of assuming mental illness where none exists, while leaving just enough doubt to keep you wondering -- a tribute to the exceptional performances of a first-rate cast, and particularly to Paltrow, whose reunion with Shakespeare in Love director John Madden proves equally rewarding for entirely different reasons. --Jeff Shannon
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