Proof paints bittersweet portrait of math genius

As intellectuals perpetually burning the "midnight oil" here at Tech, many of us fantasize, as a puddle of nap time drool forms on several pages of calculations that have taken several hours to complete, that we will have that one earth-shattering moment in which our tireless endeavors will generate the epiphany of a lifetime: a contribution so huge and utterly remarkable that we will revolutionize a way of thinking that is hundreds of years old.

Such are the sentiments conjured up in one's mind after seeing Proof. Set in the a chilly autumn in the Windy City, it stars Gwyneth Paltrow as the angst-ridden mathematical genius Catherine so much like her brilliant but mentally disturbed father (Anthony Hopkins) and Jake Gyllenhaal, sporting an unshaven look unseen in his Donnie Darko days, playing Howard, an eager and kind grad student who labors over his mathematics looking for his big "break" into the published world.

Hope Davis plays Paltrow's estranged, perky, "to do list" obsessed sister whose interference is not only a day late and a dollar short, but ill-founded and a major source of contention.

After her father's death, Catherine must endure the frequent visits of Hal, as he prepares to go through all of her father's notebooks in hopes that during the last years of his mental demise Catherine's father perhaps continued to develop elegant proofs of pure mathematical genius, as he once had produced in his earlier days.

Catherine's sister arrives home to Chicago to attend to the funeral and her sister.

As tension mounts between the characters, it soon becomes evident that maybe the father was not the only mathematical genius in the family: Catherine had developed an exquisite proof while caring for her father in his disturbed later years. However, the cutting irony of the whole matter is that there isn't any proof that she wrote this ingenious mathematical piece of material.

Catherine must deal with the inner turmoil of knowing she did her best work when her father was slowly fading away, that her sister is convinced that she is succumbing to the mental illness of their father, and that Hal wants "proof" that it is her work-a total breach of trust and faith.

Proof is a fast-paced emotional roller coaster that makes the audience genuinely feel for the problems and frustrations of its characters.

With quick cuts and up-close shots between characters in conflict, as well as frequent flash-backs which serve as a means of character introspection, the director grasps the audience's attention in order to break their hearts into a thousand pieces.

Proof deals with the complexities of human relationships, the fact that being misunderstood is a lonely, dark place and that watching a loved one's once brilliant mind deteriorate sometimes must be suffered in silence.

Bittersweet though it may be, Proof leaves a sense of hope within us, a sense that despite all of life's difficulties, reaching out and embracing the tragedies and joys of this existence are what life is all about

The proof of this is all around us, if only we are willing to search for it.