John Madden/Miramax actors' vehicle starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Hope Davis. Based on David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play (on which Madden and Paltrow collaborated), it tells the schizophrenic Lear-like story of a brilliant maths professor at the University of Chicago (Hopkins) who loses his mind and mathematical "machinery" becoming a burden on his favourite daughter (Paltrow). Gyllenhaal plays his student determined to rescue his reputation by finding a breakthrough proof in his legacy of over a hundred notebooks, most of them filled with gibberish. Davis is the unfavoured other daughter who's made a success of her life in New York but now returns to Chicago after her father's death.
Nugget: the plot is cleverly structured with hypotheses and proofs, but doesn't quite pay off. An above average film.
Read the full review on FilmExposed.
[Update: Friday 17 June 2011: looks like FilmExposed is no more, so that link is broken.]
It's like you're running your own Jake Gyllenhaal film festival. Is that by design?
ReplyDeleteNot being snarky, mind--just noting.
If you follow the links to FilmExposed, you'll see I've been reviewing the Jake Gyllenhaal 4-disc box set.
ReplyDelete