Monday, October 17, 2005

{Proof} The Movie

What I liked about it

Have you seen {proof} yet? Its pretty good, both my math teacher at UDC and my buddy from Chicago (as am I, born there anyway) saw the play. The film had some over-acting (always hard I guess to take a play into a film) and obvious boy-girl stuff and tried too hard to be hip, but overall I liked it alot.

Top Ten cool things about Proof:

10) The sisters create a good, if obvious, juxtopisition of external thoughtless consumerist yuppieism versus internal creative struggle.

9) Mathematicians in real life dont look like actors.

8) It is about a woman mathematician.

7) There is the line where the dude tells the girl, who always wears a jeanjacket but now sports a black dress, bought by her sister, natch, for their father's funeral, that she looks good in the dress. She says thanks but it doesnt fit. He says, "yes it does but I can't prove it. However I can prove the opposite". "How?" "By taking a poll". (A pretty funny populist twist on the scientific method in keeping with the running 'nerd' theme of the film).

6) The girls' father was credited with creating a mathematical model for rational behavior. He wanted with his work also to get different disciplines "talking to each other".

5) The dude mathematician plays hockey and the drums.

4) It is about staying home or running away from your problems and taking care of your loved ones when they are going through problems, and as well the danger of sacrificing too much of yourself. It is also about how family members may want you to be more like them and use control methods (consciously or not) to this end.

3) There is a collegial riff on the nature of intellectual discovery and breakthrough. Is it through hardwork, piecemiel application or innate (lucky) intelligence and the 'big idea'?

2) Another underlying message is quality versus appearance. In the nature of beauty and taking credit for your own or somebody else's work. ("The true road is long and tedious", Robert Heinlein, who also coined the term, "there is no such thing as a free lunch" - neither of which of course are quoted in the movie but they seem applicable to describe it.)

1) It is about Chicago (both the town and the school).

See you at the movies.