Movie Review: Flightplan and Proof: Blondes, Grim and Dreary
Published November 09, 2005
In addition, with no other characters on Kyle's side and her little girl out of the picture for most of the running time, we've no one to identify with but Foster as Kyle, up there alone, and she'd have to be a hell of a lot more amusing than she is in this movie to carry the picture. She does the trembly-but-tough number that impressed so many people in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Adding motherhood to the character doesn't broaden it, however, but makes her more monotonously "fierce." Foster sports a pinched bloodless expression through the entire movie--first as a sign of grief and incomprehension, then of panic and fear, then of vengeful anger. Foster is well over the threshold of believability, given the implausible premise, but I don't experience active pleasure watching her anymore. As Kyle, Foster faces off against the embodiment of evil, but of the two she's by far the grimmer figure.
Proof: Princesses
Like the protective mother-and-child romance, the father-daughter romance has a built-in primal emotionality. In a father-son romance, the proposition is whether the son will live up to, or perhaps exceed, his father's example, and the answer is always, eventually, yes. Too much emoting on the son's part would make us think his eventual success improbable, and we're not there for the emotions, anyway, but for the release of the final triumphant, and usually violent, act of justification. By contrast, in the father-daughter romance, the emphasis may be on the perceived improbability of the daughter's achievement and how frustrating or infuriating it is to the daughter. (I wrote more extensively about father-daughter romance in my review of Million Dollar Baby.)
In Proof, based on David Auburn's Tony- and Pulitzer-Prize-winning play and directed by John Madden, Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the daughter of a great University of Chicago mathematician who had done all his best work by his mid-20s and later lost his mind. Catherine is the faithful daughter who gave up her own promising mathematical education to take care of him until his death. The heroine has inherited her father's talent for math, but having seen him lose his mind she's afraid she's too much like him, and this fear has cut her off from her sister, her career, and any possible friendships or relationships. When a groundbreaking mathematical proof turns up among her late father's notebooks, no one is close enough to Catherine to know if she's capable of having written it, as she claims. They think she's at best delusional.
The drama draws its tension from Catherine's fear that her inheritance from her father is not only a gift but possibly a curse as well. The story is not developed naturalistically, however--the proof at the heart of the piece, for instance, is not explained to us. (The uninitiated couldn't possibly know what is meant when a character refers to an element of a proof as "hip"). Instead, Auburn keeps the romance functioning by setting the plot up as a melodrama with two potential villains: Catherine's sister Claire (Hope Davis), an anal, pink-lady professional who wants to take Catherine back to New York and stash her in a mental institution, and the father's grad student Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), who romances Catherine but who may be exploiting her for the good that association with such a proof could do his career.
- Movie Review: Flightplan and Proof: Blondes, Grim and Dreary
- Published: November 09, 2005
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Drama, Video: Romantic Comedies, Video: Suspense and Mystery
- Writer: Alan Dale
- Alan Dale's BC Writer page
- Alan Dale's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
Hey Aaman,
Thanks for the comment. I think it was the breath on the window that made me realize about The Lady Vanishes. Gave me a point of focus for my carping, anyway.
What's up with Paltrow? This could start a brushfire here on Blogcritics, I suppose, but does anybody like her? I don't know anyone who can stand her and the critics who praise her don't sound like they actually like her but rather like they think they should. She's so classy, and all that. Every time I hear or read something she's said, I can feel my arteries harden. If she were fun to watch I wouldn't care.
Hey Alan,
First, I'd have to say great review, as always. Only if more critics could be as educational and witty as you in their reviews. I agree with Aaman that I didn't see the parallels with "The Lady Vanishes" until you pointed them out as well!
And thank God I'm not the only person who isn't a big fan of Paltrow! It's really quite disturbing to see critics fawning over her while ignoring how much of a crushing bore she is. And what's more shocking is that so many critics fail to point out that she's nothing but a mechanical actress with no soul. But can you believe she's going to play Marlene Dietrich in an upcoming biopic? Poor Dietrich; she's probably rolling over in her gave as we speak. I always felt if anyone could play Dietrich (or Garbo, for that matter) it should be Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I wanted to know if you've seen Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" yet? I'd love to hear your opinion on that film. I've read nothing but rave reviews and yet I can't understand why. I felt it was masturbatory in style and it just couldn't support the thesis Wong was working with. Maybe I'm wrong. Talk to you soon.
Hey Alan,
First, I'd have to say great review, as always. Only if more critics could be as educational and witty as you in their reviews. I agree with Aaman that I didn't see the parallels with "The Lady Vanishes" until you pointed them out as well!
And thank God I'm not the only person who isn't a big fan of Paltrow! It's really quite disturbing to see critics fawning over her while ignoring how much of a crushing bore she is. And what's more shocking is that so many critics fail to point out that she's nothing but a mechanical actress with no soul. But can you believe she's going to play Marlene Dietrich in an upcoming biopic? Poor Dietrich; she's probably rolling over in her gave as we speak. I always felt if anyone could play Dietrich (or Garbo, for that matter) it should be Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I wanted to know if you've seen Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" yet? I'd love to hear your opinion on that film. I've read nothing but rave reviews and yet I can't understand why. I felt it was masturbatory in style and it just couldn't support the thesis Wong was working with. Maybe I'm wrong. Talk to you soon.
Thanks, Jamal, for the compliments.
It really would be infinitely better to have Uma Thurman as Dietrich--esp. in her Henry & June mode. Paltrow is all wrong, but the one ray of hope I got from reading all those horrible interviews is that she said she was producing the movie but not necessarily starring in it.
I did see 2046 and "masturbatory" is a great term for it, except that it makes it sound like it would be fun, which I can't say it was. I'm not a Wong Kar-Wai fan. Gorgeous lulling visual style and no narrative traction. I can't remember the stories or characters or even the stars (or titles). I can't even remember which ones I've seen all the way through and which ones I've walked out on.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/39302)
Interesting post, Alan - I didn't see the parallels with The Lady Vanishes until you pointed them out.
Gwyneth is just so Gwyneth