★★★★☆

Proof is both an odd and a good movie. Gwyneth Paltrow does an amazing job in this movie. Anthony Hopkins is, as always, Anthony Hopkins, able to fill any role completely. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Catherine a socially awkward daughter of a brilliant mathematician losing his grip on sanity played by Anthony Hopkins. Catherine is taking care of her father while working on her own advanced degree in math.

I remember early on in this movie the scene between her and her professor who had assigned her a proof to do. The proof she turned in was not what he requested, it was something more important. Her excuse for not doing her assignment was that this seemed more interesting and was trapped in her head so she had to get it out. I’m not a mathematician, but, any writer knows exactly the feeling she is expressing.

Catherine meets Hal during a social gathering at her and her father’s house. Despite all her social awkwardness, they hit it off like a couple which has been together all their lives. The relationship becomes difficult when her father passes. Catherine sees her future. Somehow here near OCD sister escaped the worst of the family genes. Married and living far away, always making lists. Her sister tries to get her committed and Catherine finds out.

Enjoy twists and turns?

For a movie having no action scenes, there is no end of twists and turns to the story. I cannot really explain how good this movie is without giving away the ending. I can tell you the last third to half of the movie centers around who really created the proof of prime numbers.

This brought back quite a few college memories and not the really fond kind. IT students were pushed through elevated math and accounting classes even though only a tiny fraction of us would ever write a system using such skills on our own. There were no personal computers then. Programmers were not allowed to work alone. Each project had 20-50+ people on it. Accountants would develop all of the test cases for an accounting system and mathematicians would develop test cases for advanced systems like missile or nuclear reactor control. (Do you really want one guy without any oversight developing the control system of a nuclear power plant?)

We had to walk, however briefly, into the world of proofs. Not just reading them, but re-creating them. They teach you how to create your own proofs by having you re-create proofs which are already well known. Something about learning the process.

Negative Proof

One part which always bothered me about this entire situation was what I called a “negative proof.” If you could not prove something directly, you could back into an answer by proving everything it wasn’t. This could be accepted as a “proof” despite the fact the universe you choose to use as “everything” might have been missing something. Let me make it simple for you.

If you wish to prove a cow is a dog, you can choose a universe which has fish, cat, dog and pig then proceed to eliminate all but dog. Therefore a cow is a dog because you chose not to eliminate that.

My distaste for that part of math made the choice of IT so much easier. Yes, I’m sure mathematicians around the world are going to take great offense at my example above, but that is the impression they left me with.

Reminds me of Juno

Juno cover

Catherine was an enjoyable character to watch. In many ways her character reminded me of Juno. Yes, Juno came out a couple years later, but I didn’t watch them in that order. A dry, wise-cracking female lead is such a rare treat. Especially when they manage to pull it off so unbelievably well.

I recommend you add “Proof” to your movie rental list. Don’t worry, you don’t really need to know anything about math to enjoy this movie. It will help if you spent at least one term in college so you can relate to the college type environment.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.