Review of Proof (2005) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

This movie starts out quite promising with Catherine looking back on her past with her dad as she tries to come to terms with his passing... its a little confusing at times as the movie cuts between flashbacks depicting times Catherine spent with her rather madcap, loner father and her sorting out his things and preparing for the funeral - the overlap didn't always seem so clear to me.

I felt that Catherine was someone who seems somehow quite relatable and indeed Gwyneth Paltrow gives a decent performance as her, portraying her quite solidly as both a rather sad and also angry person, angry that perhaps more wasn't done for her dad, more specifically towards her sister who arrives, as she says, some years too late - where were you before?! etc. as well as suspicious and untrusting of her fathers ex-student Harold, although its not just other people that she becomes suspicious of but obviously herself as well, as the movie progresses, though its also true that she mostly keeps this to herself.

I felt that the story took a while to build up, as far as her questioning what she sees written in her fathers many books, with the pivotal scene just (I think) a couple of days prior to the funeral when Harold is about to leave and Catherine stops him from leaving the house and demands that he empty his bag and prove that he hasn't taken any of his fathers belongings, which he denies. As the story builds, the idea that Catherine believes she wrote the pivotal pieces of writing that Harold is so keen to publish in her fathers name is an interesting one, at first she denies that there's anything of any interest to him or to the scientific community at large and then when confronted with said notes, she turns it around and states that he didn't write it, she did but he challenges that the writing seems identical to her fathers writing present in many tens of other notebooks filled with nonsensical, eccentric scribbles (as Harold says, he had some lucid moments where he wrote and those are the key notes that could be of high value to the scienftific community), indeed Harold is so keen to find these initially that he says he's happy to read through every one of the almost hundreds of notebooks just to find them. I'll try not to reveal too much of the plot as I wouldn't want to ruin the story for others but I'm not sure that there is much that can be said without giving away some aspects of it, to be honest.

I didn't feel that this movie was entirely dramatic, although something about the story I did find to be intriguing, the fact that Catherine was secretly doubting herself or her sanity in such a basic way and the fact that she was portrayed quite convincingly - her facial expressions depicting anger and rage as well as confusion, frustration and so on is probably what kept me watching. Hopkins was a good choice to portray Catherines father as he plays a softer role (as it were) as her rather eccentric yet soft/endearing late father, showing that spark of momentary genius at times during the flashback scenes. Yes her father was mentally disturbed but he still comes across as quite human, the use of terms such as mentally disturbed probably still conjur up some extreme ideas and he certainly doesn't come across as someone who would scare little kids or anything like that, he seems quite a nice, quiet man who in one scene challenges Catherines perception of him. There is quite an endearing and somewhat sad scene that shows how perhaps deluded he was involving him sitting outside on a cold day but I won't go into anymore details so as again not to spoil the movie too much (like I say its hard to go into many details without giving away little bits here and there).

Yes I don't feel that this is really an outright drama movie as such in terms of that the story is quite slow to build up I feel and there is/was a point where I wondered where its going, it seemed a little bland, sterile even and so won't be enjoyed by some people, as such I started to lose interest but something about Catherines character ultimately interested me enough to keep me watching. There is a romance sub-plot (as it were) present which I felt was a little bit cheesy and fomulaic, predictable - I think there is a good story behind it but it wasn't really developed well enough somehow, it has some potential and is basically alright but not as good as it maybe could have been.

I felt there was something intriguing/interesting about this movie but somehow it ended up a bit too bland for me. There is something there that is interesting and the movie thankfully didn't fall into the all too common pitfall of lasting way over the two hour mark and becoming way too unecessarily drawn out, even though it did sort of meander a bit, if that makes any sense?.