Proof

Aroview: An elegant adaptation of David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, with Gwyneth Paltrow reprising her London stage role as the grieving daughter of a brilliant mathematician (Anthony Hopkins), overcome by fears she has inherited his mental instability along with mathematical gifts of her own.

In the lead-up to her father’s funeral, she finds persistent company in the form of her sister (Hope Davis) and a student (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is seeking undiscovered theorems in her father’s notebook scrawlings. When Paltrow reveals the existence of a brilliant ‘proof’, the drama deepens its themes with an investigation of the meaning of certainty: mathematical, emotional and mental. Although perhaps overly diagrammatic in script treatment, dir. Madden (who also directed the London stage version) wisely choses a plain and careful style to convey his intepretation and the whole is satisfying nourishment for the mind.