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Proof, the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
was a smart, well-constructed play, acted to perfection by an ensemble cast under the
stage direction of Daniel Sullivan. A film adaptation directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Captain Corelli's Mandolin)
and with an all star cast, understandably leads to expectations for a satisfying film
drama. Something went terribly wrong here and one of the fine theatrical experiences of
recent years turns into celluloid dross.
At the heart of the story is Catherine, a twenty-something daughter who
dropped out of college to take care of her college professor father who apparently
suffered from dementia. In the film, Gwyneth Paltrow (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Royal Tenenbaums)
plays the role created on Broadway by Mary Louise Parker, who was succeeded by Jennifer
Jason Leigh. The latter, often distracting with physical mannerisms and a little-girlish
voice, overcame these obstacles to deliver a performance that caught the fears and
insecurities, as well as the piercing intelligence of the character. Paltrow doesn't get
beneath the surface of the character, not for a minute conveying a sense either of the
brilliant mathematical mind that daughter has inherited from father, nor her precarious
emotional state and her profound vulnerability.
The father, Robert, is equally miscast, with Anthony Hopkins never
quite shaking his English accent or the same pace and phrasing he seems to be using these
days for everything from Titus to Ptolemy. Catherine's sister, Claire (Hope Davis),
arrives from New York to sell the family home after Robert dies; she wants Catherine to
move to New York where, presumably, Catherine's possibly inherited mental instability
could be monitored. As in the play, the two sisters are diametrically opposed characters,
but at least on stage there was some sense that they shared a history. Here, all three
lead characters, members of the same family, seem barely to have met one another before.
Hal, a student of Robert's and the love interest for Catherine, is
played by Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie
Darko, The Good Girl)
who is loaded with charm and good looks, but suggests none of the vulnerability that made
the stage character both more interesting and more sympathetic. In short, a great deal of
talent has been put to the service of a classic ensemble theatre piece and they've turned
it into a flat, uninvolving exercise that barely conveys the intriguing central themes of
the source material: family love and tensions, romantic love and trust and the
difficulties thereof. Even the mystery which provides the central narrative drive of the play, is frittered away on the big screen. The
result is a flaccid narrative, helped in no way by the annoying generic tinkling of
Stephen Warbeck's soundtrack.
- Arthur Lazere
