Proof - John Madden

Based on a play by David Auburn, this one sincerely broke my heart, I was expecting so much more. When one considers the canon of actors involved: Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jake Gyllenhaal, one would wonder why this is not an exceptional movie. The transition from stage to screen has always been a tricky one and John Madden knows that, having done such excellent work on Shakespeare in Love, yet the scriptor, in that case, was Tom Stoppard who is more than capable of adapting plays into screenplays. Kudos to Auburn for such a great original story, yet perhaps more practice is in order. I found that there was a constant conflict between the dynamics of both stage and screen, especially in how the actors delivered their lines, making the flow of the film very awkward. The exact opposite is true in Roman Polanski's The Death of the Maiden; the characters speak as if they are in a movie, not on the stage, and the film is stronger because of this transition. There were many noticeable scenes, however, yet the most memorable for me remains the one when Catherine finally agrees to read Robert's proof out loud to him - if only the rest of the film would have been as engaging. A combination of amateur screenplay writing and legendary filmmaking could have become a larger disaster.