We had an outing to go and see the film of the play “Proof” last night. There were three undergrads from USC, and me. Of course, we had to go and see it in my part of town, in Hollywood’s Arclight Cinema, about which I’ve spoken before. The Arclight is part of the huge transformation that is taking place around the Sunset/Vine, and Hollywood/Vine junctions and surroundings over the last several years. There are so many new things starting up (seems that there’s something new opening every weekend).
My companions (Rose, Pavitra, and Jeff) loved the film, as far as I can tell, and I would dearly love to know what the other members of the audience thought (it was a large and full auditorium, which was good to see for a film like this).
So what do I think of Proof? In short: For what it is, it’s fantastic.
It is so rare to see a mainstream film which has main characters who are all academics/scientists without resorting to a standard set of cliches about how to depict them. In fact, my usual list of complaints (see discussion in the threads of those posts) about how scientists are portrayed were addressed, as one character directly mentions that portrayal to illustrate a point in the film. There were some cliches, but they were mostly all mild in comparison to the ones to which they could have resorted, and I put them down to being part of the price you pay for trying to write a drama at all. There are also some amusingly stiff and unnatural uses of the term “theoretical physicist” by the mathematician characters, which while not intentional, I thought it resulted in those references being actually funnier, being a theoretical physicist myself.
I still find it quite sad that the central thrust of the play/film is still centred on the “mental illness of the genius” cliche which we should try to get away from in portrayals of scientists if we are ever to teach our fellow citizens that we are not to be feared as “other”. And the advertising for this film has very much focussed on that aspect. Here is the blurb from IMDB:
The daughter of a brilliant but mentally disturbed mathematician, recently deceased, tries to come to grips with her possible inheritance: his insanity. Complicating matters are one of her father’s ex-students who wants to search through his papers and her estranged sister who shows up to help settle his affairs.
See what I mean? I’m not saying that it is not an interesting subject, just that (as I’ve said in several other posts and the discussion threads thereof) we need to try to have successful protrayals of scientists as just part of the landscape of regular people. But given that choice of subject (the mental illness of the genius theme), they did a great job.
The academic atmosphere and the flow of the conversations about the mathematics were (largely) very realistically done. There were no artificial constructs, and certainly no stupid scenes where the woman scientist (always played by beautiful actress that nobody notices at first) takes off her glasses, wobbles her head, making her hair fall down about her shoulders and then the male lead notices and says “Why, Dr. Jones, you’re beautiful!”. Nope, none of that.
The comfortably (relatively) ordinary-looking leads, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal, two of my favourite performers from the younger set, were excellent. Witness Paltrow’s character’s hand hovering for several moments because a thought about what she’s working on hits her while she’s reaching into the refrigerator to get something. Witness the joy on her demeanour from the revelation brought on by the idea, extra poignant since she’s been working so hard on it. We can all relate to that. Anthony Hopkins was his usual solid self. His portrayal of the father’s evident pride and joy at being able to do mathematics with his daughter was touching. Hope Davis was also very good as the one “outsider” looking in at the world of the academics. (The “i” joke was extremely well handled…)
I do recommend that you see it, since films portraying academics of any sort as the main protagonists are rare, and good ones are even more rare. Do come back here and share what you think of the film - without too many plot details and spoilers for those who have not had a chance to see it, if at all possible (at least while it is still a short time since the film’s release).
Well, after that, since the night was still young and we were in the heart of the entertainment capital of the planet, we did other things. First, my usual stop at the excellent and huge collection at Amoeba Music which is right next door to the Arclight. I was looking for the DVD of season one of (the excellently written, cast, acted, and directed reimagining of) Battlestar Galactica (which I ended up not buying….it’s not yet on sale there….got to save my pennies, you know.)
One of us (Rose) purchased a CD, we all soaked up the fun atmosphere of Amoeba (which is the main point of going) and then we headed off to West Hollywood to Mel’s Drive-In (of American Graffiti fame, although not this branch…so it makes complete sense that we - as USC folk- went there…) for milkshakes. Yep, $5 milkshakes (more or less), just like in Pulp Fiction, and really really excellent ones.
The only drawback at that particular Mel’s Drive-In is that it is not a Drive-In. Unless I missed another entrance, it is neccessary to do that thing I hate so much (popular in LA because nearly everyone wants to think they’re a celebrity): Valet parking. You hand the keys to some potential idiot to let him 
monkey around with your car and screw up your transmission and bodywork. And you tip him for this as well! Sigh.
Anyway, it was a fun evening, it’s late morning now and I have a long Sunday of work ahead of me. Strangely, I’ve got a morning headache reminiscent of a mild hangover, which is funny since we only had milkshakes (undergraduate companions, you see).
-cvj
September 25th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
I read the play. I was disappointed by the lack of any illuminating or expository discussions about mathematics itself, rather than using it as a mere back drop.
But I will definitely see the movie on the strength or your recommendation. Please continue your excellent work as a film reviewer!
September 25th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Belizean. Thanks. I’m happy to see science used as a backdrop. I will consider it progress if we can have routinely ordinary dramas that everyone will go to see where the characters just “happen” to have science as their careers, and writers can choose to freely dip in and out of the subject matter of their work to enrich the drama as they see fit. We should be able to have those sorts of films alongside the ones that also examine the science more closely as well. Just like we have in several other careers that people consider “normal”. The strive to acheive an ordinariness of the setting is my central point. From there we can make real progress.
cheers,
-cvj
September 25th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
The Battlestar Galactica first season, including the pilot series, is available to download
[cvj snipped out the link…see comment below -cvj]
There is nothing illegal in sharing this link. But feel free to delete this post if it offends.
Thanks for the review of “Proof” and tour of some of LA.
September 25th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Hmm, This is a tough one Garrett. I don’t like any form of censorship on this site…. But I think I’m going to actually delete the link. People are free to find it on Google and I don’t want to aid in free downloads like that except when they are samples provided to encourage the purchase itself. Sorry, and I appreciate that you gave me the option to do that.
My opinion: The artists involved deserve to get the loose change they’ll get from us buying the dvd. This is especialy the case for when you get rare excellent writing such as that found in this work (I have the pilot miniseries dvd and it is just a masterpiece)….we won’t get such great writing if the filmmakers can’t use as part of their business model the fact that we’ll go out and buy it.
Cheers,
-cvj
September 25th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
Completely understandable.
And in this case, to replace the other link, this links to the DVD now available on Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/bus3e
for which, as a capatalistic Amazon associate, I would get a cut.
I do believe in supporting creative works for the reasons you cite, but I also have a certain ethical flexibility and enjoy cicumnavigating the corporate monolith.
There are, of course, many arguments for and against piracy. I come down only slightly on the “for” side, and only under certain conditions.
September 25th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
I also saw the movie last night, and thought it was pretty good, although my experience was colored by having seen the play a couple years ago here in New York. Mary-Louise Parker was absolutely fantastic in the play, giving her character a kind of edgy, independent and off-beat intelligence. In comparison, Gwyneth Paltrow’s version comes off as kind of passive and whiny.
I did appreciate the movie’s putting in a theoretical physicist as a somewhat sleazy character, and don’t remember that in the play. Also amusing was the line in both the play and the movie about math conferences being wild events involving participants taking a lot of speed. I must be going to the wrong conferences…
September 25th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
I am curious - with your eighty-hour workweek, when do you ever get time to watch TV or DVD’s, let alone go to fun events and clubs in the city?
September 25th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Jake Gyllenhaal stared in that terrible movie Bubble Boy which made light of, insulted, and infuriated those who suffer with rare genetic immune deficiencies. That said, I will probably see Proof anyway when it arrives here and I hope that he redeems himself in this movie.
I read an unfortunate review on a movie site in which the person complained that the graduate student’s professor wasn’t “dorky enough.” Sigh.
September 25th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
This movie seems as if it will not be spread widely (worldwide) and looks to be unheard of outside of american university mathematics departments, even in certain channels does it make no mark…
Ah yes, my question is, if you live in the UK, is it likely that you would ever be able to see the movie?
September 25th, 2005 at 9:23 pm
Pyracantha - You forgot gardening and blogging.
Answer number 1:
I guess we negelected to mention in the profile that there’s actually five of me. Fun me, Physicist me, Blogger me, Gardener me and Committee me…. I don’t know which is which, it’s terribly confusing. We split up when I awake, do our tasks in parallel, and then recombine at the end of the day.
Answer number 2:
I never mentioned sleeping in any of my blog posts now, did I?
Answer number 3:
Eighty hours? What, you think I’m on holiday or something?
Answer number 4:
What is this word…”work”?
Answer number 5:
Busted! I’m just a boring physicist who sits in his office and makes all that stuff up as a sort of fantasy writing project. Do you like it? Does it seem realistic? I’ve no way of telling.
Answer number 6:
I’m only telling you the half of it. No time to blog the rest….
Answer number 7:
I don’t know, but I sleep a nightly guilt-free six to seven hours, leaving a whole seventeen hours per day left over for stuff to do until the next sleep period (not counting boring seminars which give bonus sleep minutes). Somewhere in there all that stuff happens. I don’t know where you got the number eighty from, as I do not have a strict defintion of where the border is between work and play. I’m a theorist, and so carry a lot of my work around with me in my head. I often have one of my current notebooks with me, along with a pen, when I’m in the middle of a computation. You never know when you get to do a bit of work, sitting in the corner of a bar, or before the lights go down for a show to begin… On TV/DVD: Actually, I hardly watch TV at all. I pick and choose things rather carefully for regular watching, and intend to try to play catch up on outstanding things I’ve missed using DVDs (this is my first try at this - don’t know when I’ll watch it but expect that it will give me flexibility). And I’m not actually out there on the town every night (!); Did I give you that impression…?
But really, I don’t actually know the answer.
-cvj
September 25th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
Richard: On the other hand, he was great in Donnie Darko!
X: The Uk release date is apparently set at December 30th.
-cvj
September 25th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Richard, you think that’s bad? Here is a true story: Proof was filmed in part on location here at the University of Chicago and its Hyde Park environs. In a couple of scenes they used “real mathematicians” from the UofC to add verisimilitude. The filmmakers asked for volunteers for this duty from the math department, which they readily received. But at least one of the volunteers was turned away on account of the fact that she was too glamorous — it didn’t matter that she was a real mathematician, she didn’t look like one.
September 25th, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Maybe it was not to do with their view of Mathematicians, perhaps they thought they were trying to prevent distractions from the leading lady, Gwyneth Paltrow. These are film-makers after all, and “Hollywood” ones too, so there are certain conventions that must be adhered to. I imagine that one of them is that you don’t distract from the stars in the main frame.
-cvj
September 26th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Any male mathematicians from U of C eliminated for being “too glamorous” and potentially distracting from leading men Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal?…just wondering…Apparently Gweneth Paltrow performed in this Tony and Pulitzer-winning play on the London stage, reprising the same role in the film.
One can hear “Proof” director John Madden’s (also directed “Shakespeare In Love”) interview this past week on National Public Radio archives (Sept. 22, Fresh Air).
Look forward to seeing this film - thanks for the review.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
I am one of the mathematicians who was filmed for the movie (word form the US is that both my nose and a hand made it in the final cut), and the woman who was turned away is a good friend of mine. My memory of our conversation (right after the fact) about this is that the assistant director in charge of these things called her on the phone and did indeed tell her that 1. she was very beautful and 2. she looked too much like G.P. to be in the movie. Of course these guys always seemed to be telling people what they wanted to hear, and so who knows why they really turned her down. But having been confused watching movies where there are (say) two white guys in suits with short brown hair, I am at least a little sympathetic. Also, other very attractive women were not turned away. Not sure what political conclusions to draw from all this. I have to say, I find it a little strange they bothered to call her at all. Maybe this is the first time in history that “don’t call us, we’ll call you” actually turned out to be the truth.
September 27th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
Jim - thanks…nice, for once, to have evidence that I’m not BS-ing. -cvj
October 9th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
I just saw the movie Proof last night, and I must say that I recommend it. Clifford’s analysis is right on. I might add that all of the written math (briefly viewed) in the movie at least appears realistic, and they even show pages from a real math journal. This isn’t a movie strictly about math or the pursuit of math. The main thrust is about people dealing with tragic events and turns of events, but does this within the a context of academia and passion for math. In the end, it shows mathematicians as real people struggling with life as everyone else does, and this is good. Ultimately, for any movie to be successful, it must have elements of conflict, struggle, pursuit, etc., as these are what make a good story. Although the context of mental illness is important, and touches many real lives including those in academia, it has now been done twice (though in very different ways), and I would hope that we could move on to other stories.
The toxic sister was a complete surprise, and was one of the best performances in the movie. I believe this was who Clifford referred to as the outsider. There is a clue in the story that it may actually be the sister who eventually inherits her father’s problems.
I can guarantee (without really giving anything away, I hope) that even if you correctly guess how the mystery will be resolved, you will still be emotionally moved.
October 9th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Richard, so glad you enjoyed it too!
-cvj
October 17th, 2005 at 1:41 am
[…] Went to see it at my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, which I’ve told you about before (here and here), and it was in the fantastic Cinerama Dome. Another great thing about the Arclight is that theyhave interesting film-related displays in the lobby contributed by the film-makers. Guess what they have on display now? Two of the model sets from the film! […]
February 17th, 2006 at 12:47 am
[…] Where was I? Oh, yes, so went to see the movie. It was clearly going to be a better “performance” of the film if one went along to a place that had a good audience (the Arclight, of course) and maybe with some like-minded friends, so I took some students along on a sort of “field trip”, like I did for Proof last semester (see post here). Admittedly, the connection to mathematics and physics is a bit harder to argue for in this case, but what the hey…. So there was Arnab and Rama from Team cvj, (that’s a sort of in-joke…see Wes Anderson’s wonderful “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”) , and Amy Cassidy from the Condensed Matter Theory group, and she brought along her friend Sam, who is not a student, but a web page architect. (Yes, she did use the word “architect”…. not a mere “designer”, I gather.) Anyway, Sam is probably way hipper than any of us, but she didn’t seem to mind being seen with us for an evening, bless her. […]
April 13th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
[…] Next to this group was another group with someone familiar, Pavitra Krisnaswamy (left, below), who was in my electromagnetism class last year. She’s also a Physics major, and you’ll also remember her as one of the students who came on one of the movie-going field trips (to see Proof). She’s been working (with Christin Chong, right, and others) on aspects of Biophysics, in the Pulsed Power Lab of my colleague Martin Gundersen. The project was entitled “An Interdisciplinary Study of the Long Term Effects of Nanosecond Electropulse Therapy for Cancer Treatment”: […]