Proof

[Deleted]

Okay who else suffered through this movie?

[girlnamedcarl]

I did.[/color]

[Deleted]

You gotta have some juice, 'cause the rest of us are just not gonna be enthralled by prime numbers.

And it sounded like the characters were not that enthralled by prime numbers or mathematics in general. The characters did not speak naturally at all. They did not sound like mathematicians or academics in their field. They all sounded like actors who just found out about prime numbers two minutes ago.

Who wrote this screenplay/script? Someone who doesn't know much about mathematics or acedemic people I would imagine.

There were so many scenes that grated. Like the scene where Anthony Hopkin's character asks Gwhiney's character how many days she lost because he knows it..he knows she been counting. Because of course all great mathematicians are obssesed with counting things. What? Because super clever mathematics academics resemble The Count from Sesame Street of course.

Then onto the Gwyneth and Jake characters relationship. Sorry. Didn't buy it. No chemistry whatsoever and the pretty bad miscasting. I didn't buy Gwyneth playing a 27 year old opposite Jake playing just a year younger at 26 either. Gwyneth would have been better off playing his aunt.

[Deleted]

I just saw it and it was as flat as Miss Paltrow's voice. That wasn't a Chicago accent that she was going for. What was it? An adenoid accent?

I don't think that the problem was solely the script; although if you've taken any higher mathematics courses, you begin to think that all these mathematicians are rather stupid.

The script set up a couple of "compelling" mysteries to be solved? Who came up with the great mathmatical insight on how to deal with....whatever. And is Miss Paltrow's character crazy or on the route to Crazy or just dwaddling by the roadside? These mysteries and their solutions should have been thrilling---I see this as a thriller of the brain and its constructs; BUT no. This was so flacid---who cared? I even forgot about the math proof halfway through the movie and Miss Paltrow's character became so annoying that I wanted her shipped off to the middle of Lake Michigan and dumped.

I blame the direction of the movie. The same guy who did "Shakepeare in Love" did this, so I know that he is capable. But he didn't know what he was doing here. There was no tension, no unbearable fear that the worst imagined has happened, no imagination in this movie.

And Mr. Gyllenhaal is cute; but he can't play intelligent convincingly.

[Deleted]

And is Miss Paltrow's character crazy or on the route to Crazy or just dwaddling by the roadside?

What bugged me is that everyone was like "She might be CRAZY!" but she didn't play the role as "I might be going insane" she played it as "I might possibly be vaguely mentally challenged and forever frozen in the mind of a 10 year old who's really good at math."

AnTony Hopkins played "possibly crazy" very well. He was sort of manic and then depressed and sat outside in the snow with out a coat on. This is what movie goers tend to expect when you say "crazy". Gwynnie tromping along behind her sister and not combing her hair is more of a "riding the bus with my sister" sort of thing.

[Deleted]

I don't think that the problem was solely the script; although if you've taken any higher mathematics courses, you begin to think that all these mathematicians are rather stupid.

I'm just a bastard Statistician with no post-grad education whatsoever and those mathematicians sounded thick as bricks. I know more Pure Math than they seemed to and these were supposed to be doctrats and esteemed academics deemed to be genii (sp - and thank god I'm not taking up a part in a movie playing a spelling super-wiz!).

Where did that dialogue come from. Mathematicians don't speak like that. Even the greenest undergrad freshers don't speak like that. How were we supposed to buy any of them them as people at the top of their field with PhDs and published research papers or a math genuis or a math prodigy?

It bugged.

I feel that your average person could see through it. Anyone who went to junior high and flunked algebra would think there was something wrong and not buy it either.

The script set up a couple of "compelling" mysteries to be solved? Who came up with the great mathmatical insight on how to deal with....whatever.

And that's another thing. They didn't even say what it was the proof of or put it in context. It was supposed to be important or groundbreaking but they just brushed over it. I found it hard to take seriously or really care which character really wrote it. It was so blah I felt none of the characters seriously cared about the all important proof that was the contents of that notebook.

[Ladybug]

I was very sympathetic towards the Catherine character. Having to care for a mentally unstable parent with no support or help for four years would drive a person a little batty, but not necessarily crazy. I hated how her sister just automatically assumed that she must have the same condition as the father. And I also sympathized with Catherine giving up her personal life and academic goals to take care of crazy pop, all the while she is a mathematical genius. Take away the genius part, and lots of people who have cared for a dying/sick relative can relate to Catherine's turmoil. So, I was very disappointed that Gwyneth Paltrow chose to play what could've been an complex and sympathetic character as if she were a petulant, whiny teenager.

And Jake Gylenhaal was just totally wrong for his part. I never once believed him as a "math geek." And his dialogue especially sounded really out of place and wrong for a math grad student. He kept refering to his colleagues as "geeks" and informed the sister that the proof "checks out." Is that what a really mathematician would say? "The geeks say this checks out." That's what I would say, because I know nothing about math!

I though Hope Davis and Anthony Hopkins were really good, though.

[seton]

What happened to the OLD Proof thread?

I saw this in the theatres and thought Paltrow overacted. I danced a jig when she wasnt nominated for an Oscar.

[Deleted]

This is a good discussion.

Another thing: somewhere in the movie Mr. Gyllenhaal's character says that the PROOF, or whatever, uses mathematical techniques developed in the eighties and the nineties that supposedly Mr. Hopkin's character would never know about even though he is a brilliant mathematician because he is, in someway, frozen in Crazy and the fourth dimension, time.

Please, mathematicians spend all their time socializing and talking with other mathematicans about their interests and if one of them were to not know how to do something or approach a problem, he/she would be asking all his/her math colleagues for their opinions. Mathematicians supervise developing mathematicians and they have to know what is going on in the many fields of math and if they don't; they have a whole educational facility (even if they work in private companies or goverment ones) at their command to find out. And mathematicians teach students and those students have to be taught the lastest math advances and techniques to become mathematicians themselves.

OK, the script sucked and the direction sucked.

Anyone familar with the higher education facilities of North America (and the rest of the world), anyone who had been to a higher education facility would know that NEW is always in and discussed to death. That a mathematican of Mr. Hopkins' character's abilities would not have been exposed to the techniques of the eighties and nineties, not taught them, or recommended them to his grad students---is just unbelieveable as a syllogism or component of a mathematical proof.

Einstein was tinkering with every new physical discovery and mathematical technique to refine his theories until his death. A mathematician's brain does not disappear after 27 years of age, unless we are talking about Mr. Gyllenhaal's character, who never had one to begin with.

[Deleted]

Another thing: somewhere in the movie Mr. Gyllenhaal's character says that the PROOF, or whatever, uses mathematical techniques developed in the eighties and the nineties that supposedly Mr. Hopkin's character would never know about even though he is a brilliant mathematician because he is, in someway, frozen in Crazy and the fourth dimension, time.

Exactly. Another part of the plot that made absolutely no sense whatever. One of many. It just got worse and worse and less believable.

Too many gaffs with a script supposedly about highly educated and really, really, really clever people. Bad casting - Gwyneth and Jake? No! And a plot that meandered way to much to be even vaguely leading itself anywhere interesting enough to want to follow it.

A waste of just under two hours.