PROOF
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
PROOF is a film written and directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. It stars Hugo Weaving, Genevieve Picot, Russell Crowe. Australian. Rated R for brief nudity, mature themes.
PROOF is the first feature film by the 31-year-old Australian writer-director Jocelyn Moorhouse. It is perfect. She has given us something very special -- a completely original film directed with precision and insight.
The story asks the question "Why would a blind person take photographs?" The answer is rife with dramatic possibilities and compelling implications about human nature, about truth, about trust.
Partial plot summary follows. Possible spoilers, but owing to the limited circulation of this excellent film in the U.S., I feel justified to discuss the plot in a limited way:
The blind person is Martin, played by Hugo Weaving, who cannot trust anything or anyone. His photos are his way of providing proof that the world he perceives is the same as the one of the sighted. In the absence of vision, he seeks absolute truth, but trusts no one to describe his photos to him until he meets Andy, played by Russell Crowe, who has the time and ability to describe Martin's photos in 10 words or less. Andy's arrival threatens Martin's housekeeper, Celia, played by Genevieve Picot, who is locked in a closed-loop relationship with Martin that is cruel, sadistic, cynical, and mutual.
Andy is the catalyst that breaks everyone out of the loop. Martin must learn to trust someone who he knows has lied to him once; he must accept the fact that "everyone lies." Andy has to pull himself out of his wandering, aimless, purposeless life. Celia must walk away from the life she's lived for the last three-and-a-half years; she and Martin must change their lives from models of mutual, destructive dependence to a new, more painful independence. These are the small epiphanies of real people moving through their lives.
Moorhouse's film is small and concentrated on people who are interesting without being impossible. She concentrates on her story and on her actors, who excellent. She does this without bravado or pretension and with no false steps.
PROOF is, nevertheless, a visual success, neatly composed, shot in natural light, sharply edited, with much of the story coming through visually. The story is also funny, surprising, even shocking in a quiet way. Moorhouse uses her sound editor to mix natural sounds and a sound track by the Australian group Waving, Not Drowning to enhance a non-visual realm of the senses.
I recommend PROOF to you in the strongest possible terms. Look for it, ask for it. It may be the best film you see this year.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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