Time for another Mathematical Review! Today’s featured movie is the 2005 film version of Proof, directed by John Madden. Proof was originally a play written by David Auburn in 2000, about the daughter of a famous mathematician who, after her father’s death, is forced to come to grips with the genius, as well as the possible madness, that she might have inherited from him. The play received many awards, including “Best Play” at the 2001 Tony Awards, and it also gave Mary-Louise Parker a Tony for her lead role as Catherine.
Proof is one of my all-time favorite plays, mostly because of its “math-iness”. Out of all the fictional stories about mathematicians, I felt that Proof was the most accurate and the most respectful towards the profession. It speaks reverently about the aesthetic appeal of professional mathematics, and at the same time addresses many of the fears that prospective mathematicians, like myself, secretly share, like the fear of becoming irrelevant in research. But aside from the math, Proof was an interesting, original drama that explored many complex themes in a rather simple narrative. So when I found out that there was a movie adapted from the play, I was at the same time excited and nervous. Could this film adaptation be as good and as successful as the play? And, more importantly, will it retain its treasured “math-iness”? (Yes, I am trying to make this a word)
I will say this right off the bat; compared to the last mathematical movie I reviewed, Good Will Hunting, Proof does a much better job at depicting mathematicians and their work. Proof doesn’t actually show much of the written mathematics, and I think that goes towards the film’s benefit. Instead, the mathematics is mostly found within the characters’ dialogue, and the terminology that is used is congruent with what real mathematicians would talk about. The math is still techno-babble here, but I can’t really see it being used as anything else. At least David Auburn and the makers of this movie wrote the mathematical dialogue in a way that wasn’t insulting towards mathematicians. In general, I was very impressed by how correctly the terminology was used in this film.
So the main mathematician in Proof is Robert Llewelyn, played by Anthony Hopkins. Robert was a fictional professor from the University of Chicago who was universally known as one of the greatest mathematical minds ever. It is pretty clear that Robert is modeled after John Forbes Nash, and anyone who has seen A Beautiful Mind can tell you how. Robert was a genius, but he was inflicted with a mental illness (possibly schizophrenia, like Nash) that prevented him from working in his later years. Though the dialogue, it is also revealed that his research interests were in algebraic geometry, game theory, and nonlinear operator theory, which were similar topics in Nash’s research.
There are actually many references to other mathematicians within this film. For example, Catherine and Hal (played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal, respectively) share a discussion about female mathematician Sophie Germain. Robert and Catherine talk about an interesting mathematical tidbit that was taken from an anecdote about Srinivasa Ramanujan (click here for more information). Also, the proof that initiates the main conflict of this film is clearly based off of Sir Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
The specifics of this proof, by the way, are never revealed to the audience, but we are given a few scant details about it through dialogue. We know that it is an important proof, as it gets young mathematician Hal all giddy inside when he discovers it. We are also told that the proof is about prime numbers. My first guess as to what the proof could have been about was the twin prime conjecture, but really, it could’ve been anything.
Overall, I’m glad that the field of math that they chose to focus on in this movie is number theory, which contains many interesting facts that can be easily explained to a non-mathematical audience. Therefore, instead of the math just being used as techno-babble for the characters, it also helps with the entertainment value of the movie. Also, it helps out the plot by working nicely with the research interests of Robert, making it reasonable for Hal and Claire (Catherine’s sister) to believe that he wrote the mysterious proof (algebraic geometry has many close connections with number theory).
In one scene of the movie, Catherine and Robert (or her vision of Robert, I’m not sure) talk about some aspect of this proof. They mention Siegel zeros, which leads me to believe that the proof has something to do the Riemann zeta function, a function that definitely DOES have something to do with prime numbers. Anyway, later in the movie, Hal talks about the modern techniques used in the proof. In the original play, Hal mentions elliptic curves and modular forms, which were techniques used to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. For some reason, the movie changes Hal’s lines to instead mention noncommutative geometry and random matrices. I could easily see how noncommutative geometry could have been used, since it is a subfield of algebraic geometry that, as I said before, has ties with number theory. However, I was a little confused at first by the use of random matrices. How could matrices, let alone random matrices, help at all with a theorem about prime numbers? However, after a little research, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that random matrices actually HAVE been used in work involving the Riemann zeta function, so that checks out as well (click here for more information). You see, it’s these little touches within the movie that prove to me that the producers and writers really wanted to get the mathematics right, so kudos to them!
The one thing, though, that disappoints me about this movie, as well as the play, is the portrayal of mathematicians. We are told that mathematicians only do their best work after the age of 26 or so, which is completely untrue (Wiles was over 40 years old when he submitted his proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem). We are also told that mathematicians are party animals who have sex all the time and take amphetamines. While I appreciate the movie trying to dispel some of the stereotypes about mathematicians being antisocial nerds, I feel that they have gone too far with this. Finally, we see the old “crazy genius” stereotype in Robert (and possibly in Catherine), which I’ve seen in almost any fictional piece about mathematicians. I personally do not have a huge problem with this particular stereotype, but I thought I’d mention it since some other people might. Besides all that, though, it does not get much more mathematically accurate than Proof when it comes to fictional work. Auburn, as well as the makers of the film adaptation, put so much work into making every mathematical detail accurate, reasonable, and interesting, even though they do not have much mathematical experience themselves. It really does make the math nerd inside of me smile.
As for the movie, I thought it was only alright. I really wanted this movie to become one of my favorites, since I really liked the play, but I had many problems with the movie despite its great story. I thought Paltrow and Gyllenhaal were gravely miscast in this film, as they both gave rather bland performances here (Hopkins, of course, was amazing as Robert). Plus, the tone of the film lost much of the subtle humor that was in the script. It had some funny moments, but it also had some missed opportunities. Overall, the movie was just so bland, and it could have been much better than it was. I would still recommend it, though, because it does have enough decent moments in it to keep you invested in the plot. Just don’t be expected to be blown away by it.
Despite my mediocre impressions of the film itself, I still think that the makers of the film should be commended for the effort they put into the mathematical content of the story. It only really appeases a small fraction of its potential audience, but it is worth it. It’s positive, intriguing works like this that can get ordinary people interested in mathematics, and I see that as a great thing! I hope that mathematical movies from now on will take Proof’s lead and tell stories that would make a mathematician proud.
By the way, here is another mathematical review of the movie, written by Daniel Ullman.
Rating of the movie: 3 Stars
Rating of the math: 5 Stars
Distributed by Miramax Films
Running Time: 100 minutes
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