METHOD IN THE MADNESS

PROOF

Directed by John Madden. Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis

15A cert, gen release, 99 min

PROOF is predicated on the assumption that a very thin line separates genius and madness. That belief has provided the engine for countless stage and screen dramas, and Proof, in its specific theme of a brilliant mathematician succumbing to dementia, inevitably prompts comparisons with A Beautiful Mind. While Proof certainly proves more effective than that blustering, over-rated Oscar-winner, it has problems of its own.

Based on a critically admired (Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning) play, the screenplay is credited jointly to David Auburn, the author of that play, and Rebecca Miller, the writer-director of Personal Velocity and The Ballad of Jack and Rose, who worked separately on adapting it for the screen. The director is John Madden, who staged the London stage production starring Gwyneth Paltrow, who won an Oscar for Madden's Shakespeare in Love.

Paltrow immerses herself in a raw portrayal of Catherine, the neurotic 27-year-old daughter of a mathematician (Anthony Hopkins) who, while in his early twenties at the University of Chicago, made some groundbreaking discoveries. Catherine inherited his flair for maths, but sacrificed her own career to return home and care for him as he passed his final years filling notebooks with pointless ramblings.

As Catherine becomes aware of her own shift into unhinged behaviour, she fears that she may have inherited his insanity. Her older sister (Hope Davis), a hard-headed Wall Street analyst, shares her concern, as does her father's protege (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose concern for Catherine may or may not have an ulterior motive rooted in his own ambitions as a mathematician.

The film goes to some lengths to open out what was a four-hander play, but its theatrical origins remain unavoidable. Not having seen Proof on stage, I find it hard to understand why it received quite so much acclaim in its original form. It would seem that no amount of intense close-ups or scene-shifting can retain the crucial intimacy that the play could have generated. Structured to accommodate flashbacks and ghostly interventions by the father, it remains intriguing as a film and benefits considerably from the commitment and conviction of its four stars. Michael Dwyer