was there one?
cuz it looks like one of those movies where this really deep message is hidden,,,,, and makes you think really hard about it ^__^
the message was Hal. just kidding
indeed the story didn't have a message or at least not a conventional one, so most peopel don't get it.
Well it's a pretty strong message if you've ever known someone who has
seriously dealt with depression.
Most importantly, in my opinion, is the theme of "how many days have I lost"
About moving forward and regaining a focus in life.
It's a small specific play and film, definitely not subject matter for a huge audience.
But you relate to it, it's quite special.
This movie can really be fully undrerstood.
Not because it's emotional or it carries a message about depression, or lost time in our lives, or whatever of that kind.
This message is about us being so small, being relatively primitive to this perfection of math. I might call it my own definition of God. Math is everywhere! It was here before us. It was always been here and everywhere. It's the truth which many of us did never get to understand. Anthony Hopkins died as a sad man.
Why? Because he was too advanced. Because the primitive human gave him the biggest disapointment in his life. He did not have a strenght any more to question his own reality which was so close to god, if i may say, that typical human inside his mind started avoiding it, escaping from it...
Message of this movie is infinity. And this infinity is equal to everything...
and nothing
Just try to realize that you're everywhere and always, and there is just your mind traveling through that sequences of your infinite reality!!!
I mean, im sure that at most 5% of people reading this will have a clue why did I do it, but for the rest of you...i'll qoute this film: "The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four"
Proof. Proof of insanity. Proof of sanity. What is proof. It is a relative term and is only clear and convincing to the person that is looking for proof of whatever is unclear and uncertain. It is the constant struggle of mankind and is never fulfilled regardless of the evidence or the facts. It is in constant flux.
shareI fully agree with RubyBayGonya and poster24. I think the movie is about accepting who we are and what life has given us and taking the risk of living. A key scene in my opinion is the ending, when Catherine finally comes to grips with the fact that she has inherited her father's brilliance. She has obviously been resisting this realization because she secretly feared it would mean she has also inherited his madness. Yet, as Hal tells her, while she is a lot like her father, she is not him. As she sits down with Hal to discuss her proof and explain it to him, she has fully accepted the gift she inherited from her father, while realizing at the same time that she is a different person and that she is in a way free from him. Of course, there is no guarantee that she wouldn't eventually suffer the same mental breakdown. But she knows that she can only take what is given her and try to do the best with it, instead of being crippled with fear (which would not save her anyway). I think this could be close to what the film's "message" is.
shareThis is the most pseudo-intellectual and pretentious post i've read in a long time.
Congrats.
depression? I wouldn't call Hopkins char state depression and Paltrow char kinda seemed a lil bit more aloof/autistic than depressed to me, but still in a normal way...
maybe it's just me, but I didn't relate to this movie that much.
it's an okay film, quite interesting never transcending to really interesting - and the best part is Paltrow's char and Hal relationship...
it is indeed a more specific play, not made for a huge audience though the Paltrow char is incredibly there, like in almost every minute on screen, that's why there could've been more Hal - as the audience isn't going to indetify that much with Paltrow char.
afterwards, only a few days later, I watched Brokeback Mountain - and whew, what a movie, moved millions
NO, the depression I am referring to is Catherine.
There really wouldn't be much point in including more of Hal.
He is simply a catalyst to bring Catherine around.
I think there is a difference in "identifying" with Hal and wanting to look at Jake.
Catherine doesn't seem depressed to me, rather somewhat aloof or even mildly autistic.
I liked Hal a lot, too (and I like Jake as well; however, Hal as a character is endearing)...
Where do you get autistic from? I didn't see it.
shareI did see that too - autistic (but only mildly, in a rather aloof sort of way)...
a rather introverted character though also a party type or relationship type (s. relationship with Hal), with lots and lots of shorter relationships, but not really serious ones... these are like general observations.
you know how these people are, in an inner way autistic, extremely brainy - and then again they're well-liked and often are considered extroverted, confident, bossy types...
but I also thought, when looking past the facade, you see that Catherine is a lil bit autistic... like she likes to live in her own head best and finds it difficult tu really not be egoistic and to really connect to other people. seems a little bit disaffected and not interested (aloof).
this is also what I did not like about the char - she is a rather cold lab-person... and not everybody can identify with that. and Hal has a more extravagant and lighter side which fits pretty well with Catherine's characters ... Hal shows us that not all maths people are the clicheey "brainy" types...
Imagine two rather cold people together, wouldn't work out.
She is certainly depressed, and with good reason. She has spent the last five years caring for her mentally ailing father. She went through his remission with him, only to see him fail once again. For five years she made her father's comfort her reason for living. Suddenly he's gone. She has no idea who she is and she lacks in social skills due to living in what essentially was isolation with her father. She doubts her own mathematical and life skills, and perhaps now feels useless. Her sister decides to sell her house. No one believes that she wrote the proof, which puts her in more doubt. Is she crazy like her father? If not, will she become so?
She is totally living in her head, and what her head is telling her is all negative. She is definitely depressed. Her decision at the end to stay in Chicago is a choice to begin really living for herself, and perhaps the first step out of the depression.
Gwyneth Paltrow played this role extremely well, with the perfect tone.
I agree totally, and remember, her father is only recently in the grave. She not only has to deal with her own self-image, but also the incredible greif over her dead father. She is not out having a great time emotionally when her father is freshly in his grave. That does not mean that she is an aloof geek-it means that is how she deals with her greif.
Also, another theme I kind of liked is that a woman staying at home to care for someone that she loves does not mean that she is not capable of anything else. She cared for her father much better than her sister (who egotistically takes alot of pride in caring for people better than they can take care of themselves) while at the same time revolutionizing mathematics. It implies that other women (who are not quite as amazing to be able to do both things at once) could be at home because they care about someone close to them, not because they do not have the skills to do anything else (as some chauvinists believe). I also liked the commentary on the over-protetive, I'm-doing-it-for-your-own-good housewife. (note that she is going to get alot of money from the sale of the house) I think that they are really annoying in general, and this movie, apparently, aggrees with me.
There is also the thing that crazy people have value. They do in fact NOT ruin people's lives. Her dad is the one that stopped her moping, and he gave her ideas to use on her proof. It is something she would not have done otherwise (we saw that she was on the verge of failing her classes because of inattention and tangents). But, when she went back to her father, he gave her the motevation and the resources for a better education, and helped her on the equivalent of a doctoral thesis (the final big proof). Although he was not writing anything on his own, he was definatly helping his daughter (we saw that during the TV scene)
That, at least, is what I got from the movie.
hmm... strange... she seemed a sorta alloof geek to me
the sister was played pretty well, though she didn't have such a great or big role but Catherine was on screen almost the whole time, I remember when I saw the movie and had to walk through long hours of only Catherine-Catherine-Catherine... because she has so mauch and real screen presence (not liek the otherS) she is somewhat overwhelming in that movie...
and then that little piece of Gyllanhal- I could've watched more of him
I found this film really interesting. To begin with, there´s no need for a "message behind the movie" I think. It´s quite clear that it begins with a cross-road, which Catherine passes by, and that very same cross-road ends in the form of christian cross... so... should we say it´s a catholic message? Not at all. On the other side, "only Catherine-Catherine-Catherine" shouldn´t mean something within the movie? or just that the writer and director didn´t have many other things to say? I think that the movie is focused on Catherine and her house for one clear reason: she is about to breakthrough. Killing (metaphorically -maybe not-) her father; discovering this proof. The only thing that´s left is to go public; let the world know that science advances. Catherine has to make a choice and that´s when she recreates her possibilites: this would be Gyllenhal and her sister. I don´t think they are real -material- characters, but instead, characters created by her. Within her mental house both ways fight their way through her, and luckilly, she decides to expose the proof to the world... maybe in this moment we could regain the real Hal (after all, there is a real base for Hal and Claire). Every famous name in human history is not a superhuman, but a human being, full of flaws, as we all are. Jesus, Einstein, Poe, Hoffmann, Akutagawa, Kurosawa, and so on, they all took the risk and they succeeded.
- BahamutXs
i think she was bi-polar, not 'autistic'
share
There was a moment in the movie that I've not seen commented on anywhere on the board--not that I've read it all--the morning after Catherine and Hal were together, after the wake, when she is outside on the porch, and a bird calls. She is startled, looks up, and the sun hits her face, and she looks like she is seeing for the first time since forever the world beyond the cell that she has occupied for so long--a child calls from down the street, and she cocks her head, and listening, and looks surprised, as if she is saying to herself, "Oh, yes. Kids. I remember." It is a subtly-played moment, and yet, to me it is the transitional moment of the film. The lovemaking might have been the catalyst, and she accepted the persuasion to take part, but that moment on the porch is when she is CHOOSING to open herself again to life. That made the following scene (house is being sold, no one believes her about the proof) even more painfully poignant, and leads to that scene where she is on her floor crying, "I shouldn't have written it, I shouldn't have written it."
Again, Hal is a catalyst (runs beside car and returns proof--in a sense, he offers his own `proof' that he can be trusted,) but she is the one who CHOOSES to leave her sister at the airport and reach out again for life.
If there is a message, that's the one I took out of it, that there is a moment of choosing, and we have to reach out for life if we are to step fully into our selves, our becoming. It is a risk--the first time Catherine took it, she was betrayed by both of the people that had influence over her. Yet she tried again.
We can retreat and accept despair, or we can reach out and take chances and grow.
There is one other theme I saw in the movie, and that is that we were not given enough information about her father and herself to make a fact-based determination of her sanity, and of whether she wrote the proof or not. Thus we are as an audience asked to make a decision about her, based not on facts, but on the quality of her character, on the small clues that we are given about her as a person. We are not offered evidence until she reveals that moment through a flashback of memory, and we see that she has done the work, and her father's work is only a rant written in the style of mathematical language. The proof, then, depends upon our ability to plumb a character, to read her temperament and the truth that is in her. It's called integrity--something is itself all the way through all the layers--and Catherine, flawed as she is, has integrity.
How's that?
poster24 - that was awesome.
I think this movie deals with relationships rather than math...Catherine's relationship with her father and then her relationship with her sister and her boyfriend.
poster24 - hit the nail on the head! In the scene you posted about, Catherine, when looking at the sun seemed to have more color in her face. I think you are correct in your opions regarding integrity. Catherine has it, Hal has it and her sister was an idiot (although, I am sure intelligent!).
Great post, wish I had said it myself!
If there is a message, that's the one I took out of it, that there is a moment of choosing, and we have to reach out for life if we are to step fully into our selves, our becoming. It is a risk--the first time Catherine took it, she was betrayed by both of the people that had influence over her. Yet she tried again.
We can retreat and accept despair, or we can reach out and take chances and grow.
This is great. I'd like to add that another huge theme in the movie for me, was trust. The play's/movie's name PROOF is not just about the mathematical proof, but also that there could not be absolute proof that she was telling the truth. We in the audience get to see that she is telling the truth, as flashbacks verify everything she says, but Hal and the sister don't have that kind of proof.
And really, what absolute proof do we ever have about people to whom we are close? About anything? That is why, at the end, when Hal has come around and now believes she did write the proof because it uses new hip techniques that were not her father's style, she keeps saying that still is not proof she wrote it. She says he should have trusted her. So at the end we have Hal trusting Catherine in spite of not iron-clad proof, and Catherine trusting Hal in spite of the fact that he hurt her in the past. You have to have trust in people in order to carry on, and to love.
NewHorizons37, your reply is exactly how I felt about the movie. It's not just about a mathematical proof but having enough faith in someone that you believe their truth without having absolute proof.
shareThank you - both poster24 & NewHorizons37.
Brilliant, I feel exactly the same.
I think the material she was turning in to her professor, that he said was not what he assigned, was actually the beginnings of her proof.
God is a make-believe friend for grownups.
I get the depressed part, but only following her father's death, which is natural considering her relationship with him and what she sacrificed. I don't get depressed from her in the flashback scenes. She is most animated when discussing math with her professor, moving around on campus, and when working on her proof.
I really think the Proof in the title is being interpreted too narrowly, and that perhaps it is the proof of her work that is the focus of the message, the way that Hal and Clair react to her admission that she wrote the mathematical proof. How can anyone prove something they did or did not do? Unless there was a monitor continually witnessing an act, there is no real proof...no such thing in life, and we can only trust and believe or doubt...even to self-doubt on occasion, although I think she was still in self-sacrifice mode at the time she placed the notebook in her father's desk drawer.
Truely a fine line separates genius from madness...
It IS about the relationships, but it is about overcoming fear as well. Fear of legacy, fear of success and fear of fear itself.
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