It all adds up: Paltrow's performance sears in 'Proof'

Educators who worry that there aren't enough women in math and science, take comfort that in Proof and Flightplan, both opening today, Gwyneth Paltrow is a mathematician and Jodie Foster an engineer.

Like A Beautiful Mind, whose real-life subject may have influenced it, Proof suggests the proximity of math and insanity, subset of the one between genius and madness.

Adapted from David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Auburn and Rebecca Miller, the movie unfolds in the Chicago home of Robert (Anthony Hopkins), a mathematician who revolutionized three fields before he was 22 and who has spent his subsequent decades battling demons and dementia.

The story focuses on Catherine (Paltrow), Robert's younger daughter and caregiver, who has certainly inherited her father's aptitude but frets during the days before his funeral: has she also inherited his madness?

Reprising her role from the London stage (and essayed on Broadway by Mary Louise Parker), Paltrow plays Catherine as a prisoner in her father's house, its clutter a correlative of his disordered mind. I like Paltrow, fierce and jangled and raw, whose Catherine has many things, personal and mathematical, to prove to her sister (Hope Davis), her father's protege (Jake Gyllenhaal), and herself.

But no one likes her as much as director John Madden, who helmed Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love and whose lens captures her here in a succession of adoring extreme close-ups more befitting a L'Oréal model than the central figure in a whodunit about identity, genetic destiny, and the author of a mathematical proof.

Once you get past that golden swag and curtain of hair, Paltrow's performance is devastating, cutting to the pith and marrow of parent-child relations. The other actors in this stagebound movie fare less well, although Madden does better with a fifth character, the house with its secrets and locked desk drawers.

If the implication is that mathematicians, like screen actresses, peak early, then Paltrow's urgent turn is proof of the opposite.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey

at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Proof

*** (out of four stars)

Produced by John Hart, Robert Kessel, Alison Owen and Jeff Sharp, directed by John Madden, written by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller, from the play by Auburn, photography by Alwin H. Kuchler, music by Stephen Warbeck, distributed by Miramax Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 39 mins.

Catherine. . . Gwyneth Paltrow

Robert. . . Anthony Hopkins

Hal. . . Jake Gyllenhaal

Claire. . . Hope Davis

Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity, sexual content, drug references)

Playing at: area theaters.