• Tagline: The biggest risk in life is not taking one
• Director: John Madden
• Writer: David Auburn
• Release Date: 30 September 2005 (USA)
• MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, language and drug references.
• Parents Guide: View content advisory for parents
• Genre: Drama
• Runtime: 100 min
• Box Office #’s: Here
In Chicago, on the day of her twenty-seventh birthday, Catherine receives her sister Claire from New York for the funeral of their father Robert, who passed away a couple of days before. Robert was a brilliant mathematician that became bughouse, and Catherine had lived with him for the last five years, inclusive quitting her studies in the faculty, and she is concerned about having inherited his insanity. The mathematician of the University of Chicago, Hal, is making a research in Robert’s notebooks, trying to find any brilliant proof that Robert might have produced in one moment of lucidity. When Hal has one nightstand with Catherine, she gives a notebook to him with the development of a unique mathematics theory that Catherine claims that she developed. Hal and Claire do not believe on her, until the truth is disclosed.
From the Gallery
Also Starring
• Gwyneth Paltrow … Catherine
• Anthony Hopkins … Robert
Trivia
- Gwyneth Paltrow reprises the role of Catherine that she had played on stage in London’s West End.
- The plot of the original play was based on the life of John Nash, professor at Princeton, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in game theory and also spent many years suffering from schizophrenia. His story was later adapted into A Beautiful Mind (2001).
- The role of Catherine was originated by Mary-Louise Parker in 2000 at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York. Her performance won her a 2001 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and a 2001 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play
- Gwyneth Paltrow was pregnant (with Apple) while filming.
- David Auburn’s play “Proof” premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club, New York City, New York, USA in May 2000, and then transferred to the Walter Kerr Theater on 24 October 2000 where it ran for 917 performances. “Proof” won the 2001 Tony Award for the Best Play.
- The play “Proof” won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2001.
Quotes
Catherine: It doesn’t fit me.
[about the dress]
Hal: Sure it does.
Catherine: You can’t prove it.
Hal: I can disprove the opposite.
Hal: You read a lot of maths.
Catherine: I read Cosmo. It is just a window dressing.
Catherine: She was born in Paris in 1776.
Hal: Then I definitely never met her.
Catherine: I didn’t find it.
Hal: Yes, you did.
Catherine: No, I didn’t
Hal: I didn’t find it.
Catherine: I didn’t find it. I wrote it.
Catherine: Do you want to go?
Hal: I want to stay here with you.
Catherine: Oh.
Hal: I want to spend the day with you, if at all possible, I want to spend as much time with you as I can, unless I’m coming on way too strong right now and scaring you, in which case I’ll begin back-pedalling immediately!
Catherine: [voice over] How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I’m outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I’ve lost the key, and I can’t remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder… will I ever be able to find my way out?
[Catherine looks up; Hal is standing in front of her.]
Catherine: Sometimes in my head I think it works, and then… Sometimes I just think it’s crazy.
Hal: There’s nothing wrong with you.
Catherine: I think I’m like my dad.
Hal: I think you are, too.
Catherine: I’m afraid I’m like my dad.
Hal: You are not him.
Catherine: Maybe I will be.
Hal: Maybe, and maybe you’ll be better.
Catherine: It was like… connecting the dots. Some nights I could connect three or four of them, and some nights they’d be really far apart. I’d have no idea how to get to the next one, if there was the next one. It just seems really stitched together and lumpy. Dad’s stuff was way more elegant.
Hal: Talk me through it and tell me what’s bothering you.
Catherine: [voice over] If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line, try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it… better.
Catherine: You blew it. It’s too bad, too, cause the rest of it was really good. “I loved your dad.” “I always liked you.” “I wanna spend every minute with you.” That’s killer stuff.
Hal: I meant it.
Catherine: You got laid and you got the notebook. You’re a genius.
Hal: Talk to me, Catherine. This proof is yours.
Hal: It’s too advanced. I don’t even understand most of it.
Catherine: You think it’s too advanced?
Hal: Yes.
Catherine: It’s too advanced for you.
Hal: You could not have done this work.
Catherine: But what if I did?
Hal: Well, what if?
Catherine: It would be a real disaster for you. Wouldn’t it? You and the other geeks who barely finished their PhD’s, who are marking time doing lame research, bragging about the conferences they go to. Wow. Playing in an awful band and whining that they’re intellectually past it at 26, because they are!
Hal: Well, I’m gonna be late. Some friends of mine are in this band. They’re playing in a bar on Diversey, way down the bill, they go on about 2 to 2:30. I said I’d be there.
Catherine: Great.
Hal: They’re all in the math deparment, they’re really good. They have this song called ‘i’, you’d like it. Like lower-cased i. They just stand there and don’t play anything for three minutes.
Catherine: Imaginary number.
Hal: It’s a math joke… You see why they’re way down on the bill.
Catherine: That’s a long way to drive to see some nerds in a band.
Hal: You know, I hate when people say that. It’s not really that long of a drive.
Catherine: So, they are nerds.
Hal: Oh, they’re raging geeks. But they’re geeks who, you know, can dress themselves and hold down a job at a major university. Some of them have switched from glasses to contacts. They, uh, play sports, they play in a band, they get laid suprisingly often… So, it makes you kinda question the whole set of terms. Geek, nerd, wonk, dilbert, paste eater…
Catherine: You’re in this band, aren’t you.
Hal: Ok, yes. I play the drums. You wanna come? I never sing, I swear to God.
Catherine: It is thirty degrees outside, in the middle of the night. Are you cold?
Hal: Of course, I am freezing my ass off
