John Peacock

30140076

H231

PROOF

FILM INFORMATION:

PRINCIPAL CAST AND CREDITS

Martin: Hugo Weaving

Celia: Genevieve Picot

Andy: Russell Crowe

Martin’s Mother: Heather Mitchell

Young Martin: Jeffrey Walker

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse

Writer: Jocelyn Moorhouse

Cinematographer: Martin McGrath

Producer: Lynda House

Production Companies: Australian Film Commission & Film Victoria

Australian Distributor: Village Roadshow

RELEASE DATES

Australia: August 21, 1991

U.S.A.: May 15, 1992

BOX OFFICE FIGURES

Australia: Week 1 on 4 screens - $120,813

Week 10 on 24 screens - $164,491

Week 18 on 11 screens - $39,804

Total: $2,100,000

U.S.A.: $308,000 AUD

U.K.: $105,000 AUD

INTERVIEWS WITH THE FILMMAKERS

From 1991: The making of Proof (Moorhouse and House)– http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article.ID=1918

From 1993: Reflections on the experience (Moorhouse, House and staff from the AFC and Roadshow) – in Long Shots to Favourites by Mary Anne Reid

REVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS

12 reviews of Proof from various newspapers and publications: http://www.mrque.com/lookup?^Proof+(1991)

Extensive discussion and quotes from newspaper reviews including Village Voice, Weekend Australian, New York Times, The Age and San Francisco Chronicle: the chapter “Proof” in Long Shots to Favourites by Mary Anne Reid

One favourable review and links to 13 other newspaper reviews and articles on Proof: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Proof-1039401/preview.php

Extensive credits and information on Proof plus many positive user reviews and and a discussion board: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102721

In our readings for class, Tom O’Regan discusses Proof’s place within larger recurring themes of Australian cinema in Australian National Cinema while Scott Murray has a very negative reaction to the film in last year’s class reader

AWARDS

Australian Film Institute Awards (1991): Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Crowe), Best Actor (Weaving), Best Editing (Ken Sallows), General Members’ Prize for Excellence, Best Director, Best Screenplay

British Film Institute Awards (1992): Outstanding First Feature

Cannes Film Festival (1991): Special Mention – Best First Film

Chicago Film Festival (1991): Silver Plaque Award

Film Critics’ Circle of Australia (1992): Best Actor (Weaving), Best Screenplay, Best Female Actor (Picot)

Melbourne Film Festival (1991): Australian Psychological Society Award “for the film that best explores the human experience,” Festival Audience Award

Tokyo International Film Festival (1991): Sakura Bronze Prize

Valladolid International Film Festival (1991): Best First Film

METHODS OF RESEARCH

Most of my information came from two sources – the book Long Shots to Favourites by Mary Anne Reid and the world wide web, especially the Internet Movie Database site (www.imdb.com). Reid devotes a third of her book to Proof and has many specific details of the film’s critical and financial results at the time of its release. I could not find any other available books with discussions of Proof. For a film that is over ten years old, Proof still had an amazing number of primary sources on the internet. After checking many popular film sites and using search engines to seek for “Jocelyn Moorhouse and Proof,” I found the mrqe.com site with all the links to original Proof reviews and then the rotten tomatoes site. The class readings were helpful as well in presenting different views of the film. Perhaps there are not many other books that have references to Proof since it is just modern enough to not be considered a true “classic” yet.

CRITICAL REVIEW:

SYNOPSIS

Somewhere between the two tag lines that ran on different series of posters for Jocelyn Moorhouse’s debut feature-length film Proof lies the heart of the film itself. The first is the eloquent and thoughtful statement, “Before love comes trust. Before trust comes proof” and the other is the cutting, blunt and upsetting “Photographs don’t lie. People do.” Moorhouse crafts a tightly woven plot between the opposite poles of bitter alienation and true caring vulnerability, taking a unique and bizarre set-up and drawing out the universal truths from it. The conceit of the film is a blind man named Martin, played by Hugo Weaving, who takes photographs of his surroundings and later asks people he feels he can trust to describe them to him. It is a somewhat absurd act – attempting to use visual reality as a basis for proof of truth when the visual has never been real to Martin, but he fears being easily manipulated and used by those around him and finds solace in the act of documentation. Martin’s long-standing fear of never knowing if he can trust what is told to him is shown to the audience through flashbacks to his childhood. In these scenes, Martin’s mother describes the daily happenings of a garden through the window of their house to the young boy, but Martin continually questions the description’s veracity. The audience does not see out the window either, allowing us to share in Martin’s paranoia and frustration that he can never really know the truth.

The film revolves around Martin’s interactions with the two people closest to him – Andy, a recently befriended dishwasher who agrees to describe his photos for him, and Celia, Martin’s long-term housekeeper whose unrequited longing for Martin has caused her to become bitter, jealous and cruel. It is these two sides of humanity – the compassionate and the manipulative – that construct Martin’s world, but the lines become truly blurred when a dishonest Andy becomes secretly sexually involved with Celia and Martin is left confused, doubting and as guarded as ever. In the end, Martin fires Celia but agrees to reconcile his valued friendship with Andy. In the final sequence, Martin asks Andy to describe the cherished photo from his childhood, looking out the window at the space where his mother had always described a garden. Andy confirms that the photo does show a garden, although the audience does not see the picture. Moorhouse leaves the audience with the image of the young Martin touching the luminous garden window with his hand.

PERSONAL COMMENTARY

Moorhouse creates a stunning debut with Proof, an extremely tight-knit, well-acted, wittily written character study that takes a simple situation between three people and expands it to encompass several universal philosophical questions of humanity itself. Queries raised range from “What is truth?” to “What is reality?” to “What is film, if not images that we usually accept a bit too readily as true?” Moorhouse explores the subjectivity of most absolutes, the infuriating and unresolved issues that have plagued philosophers seeking for meaning and understanding since the Ancient Greeks. Plus, she makes it all entertaining, engaging and often, darkly humourous. By continually and subtly placing the audience in the ambiguous and unknowing position of Martin, she keeps us guessing, experiencing the frustration and mystery of never being able to find the elusive Truth. Just like Martin, the audience must learn to trust, or at least to come to peace with their somewhat helpless situation. At the end of the film, we are just as dependent on our faith in Andy’s underlying honesty as Martin is concerning the garden picture that is never shown. As Moorhouse has Andy wisely say to Martin at the end of the film, “Everybody lies. . .but not all the time, that’s the point. Your whole life is the truth. . .have some pity on the rest of us.” Martin, as well as the audience, learns that perhaps uncertain trust in others is a concession one must make since the desired “perfect truth” will never be found.

My one area of critique for the film lies with the Celia character – I feel that this is one of the more misogynistic films I have seen directed by a woman. Andy and Martin are very likable characters – human, down-to-earth, good-natured despite their faults. On the other hand, Celia’s character is written in an absurdly over-top-fashion, turning her into a freakishly-obsessed highly-sexualised cruel well of bitterness. Considering that she is the only female in the movie with a significant part, this aspect of the film makes it uneven and disturbing, especially compared to the affable Andy and Martin characters. Can one truly find compassion for a character who places obstacles in the way of a blind man's path, covers her walls in his pictures, makes him believe his dog is missing and then nearly rapes him? Moorhouse attempts to create sympathy for Celia by depicting her as long-suffering under Martin’s coldness, despite the fact that he knows she is in love with him. But I felt that Martin’s behaviour did not warrant or instigate the behaviour of the crazed Celia. Film Critic Barbara Creed notes that a trend of Australian cinema is to have heterosexual relationships become twisted and undesirable and for the classic bonds of male “mateship” to be much more valued. In her analysis of Proof, she states,

While the film is not about a homosexual relationship, its exploration of male bonding, based as it is on the exclusion of woman, suggests that all relationships between men involve a degree of homoeroticism. Woman is represented as an abject figure who must be located outside the territory of the male couple(qtd in O’Regan, 199).

Moorhouse seems to be confirming this recurring Australian cinematic theme, although both she and Picot have commented that they do not see the Celia character as misogynistic at all, simply unusual and complex.

CRITICAL UPTAKE

Proof was an overwhelming critics’ favorite and it got a huge amount of praise from most film scholars. Out of twenty-seven reviews in Australia, an amazing twenty-four were wholly positive while two were mixed and only The Sydney Review disliked the picture. Overseas, the percentages were nearly the same – out of thirty-one reviews, twenty five were highly praising, four were mixed and only two were negative(Reid, 32-33). The film swept the major categories at the AFI awards in 1991 and received international high accolades at festivals, from Cannes to Chicago. Most critics loved the richness of symbolism, metaphor and intellectual play in the film, mixed with Moorhouse’s trademark wry and skewed comedic sense. Keith Connolly of The Sunday Age in Melbourne exclaimed, “’A philosophical stance that could well be as profound as it is provocative, a narrative structure in which the ordinary person becomes increasingly threatening. It’s a spectacular feature debut for the young Melbourne writer-director’"(qtd in Reid, 16). The minority of critics who had problems with Proof felt that the film was too cold and calculated, or perhaps just too depressing. Scott Murray felt that “What can be said with certainty about Proof is that Moorhouse’s characters love to play nasty power games in an uncaring world of distrust and betrayal, broken marriages and loveless sex. Whichever way one looks at it, the portrayal of human sexuality is bleak”(130). I would only agree with this view in regards to Celia – Martin and Andy more than counteract this statement with their humanity.

PRODUCTION AND RELEASE

As Mary Anne Reid states, “Proof is a copybook example for those who advocate low budget production as the best way to make commercially viable Australian films”(13). This small character study of a film reaped three times its one million dollar budget on box-office alone, not counting its rental revenue. First-time feature director Moorhouse took a script she had written for a 50-minute film and expanded it into a full-length piece and then brought first-time producer House onto the project. The project truly got off the ground when the Australian Film Commission provided $800,000 as part of a program to help promising first-time directors, and Film Victoria provided the other $300,000 of the budget. Proof is one of the few Australian films that went into profit and paid off for its producer and director. Moorhouse and House spent much of their own unpaid time honing the film to its final tight and crafted state, and their work paid off when the film was chosen the honor of screening as the opening night premiere at the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Proof landed the slot through intelligent editing and a somewhat rare independent application to the Fortnight. 1991 was the right year for Proof – no other film at Cannes was so quietly powerful or created such a buzz among distributors and executives. A small bidding war ensued and Fine Line bought the rights to distribute Proof in the U.S. Different marketing techniques were used for different venues; in America, the preview emphasized the dark humour since “the U.S. might reject a film that is interpreted as being too intellectual”(Reid, 20). In England, the preview was set up as an intriguing thriller. Proof performed quite well at the Australian box office, reaping 2.1 million dollars, well above expectation, and gaining another $850,000 on video rentals. In the U.S. and the U.K. its performance was not as successful, but was respectable for a “quirky” art-house film. Part of the lack of break-out success in these two countries might also have had to do with the unexpectedly volatile political climate in both at the time of its release. Unfortunately, in the U.S., the Los Angeles riots were in full effect and in the U.K., the IRA had just started another London bombing campaign(Reid, 20-27).

PRIOR AND SUBSEQUENT WORK OF THE PRINCIPALS

Proof was one of the first efforts for nearly everyone involved and proved to be an enormous stepping stone for a number of careers. After the film’s international acclaim, Moorhouse went on to direct the successful Hollywood productions How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and A Thousand Acres (1997), both nearly-all female casted, sensitive and emotionally rich films and, if anything, perhaps softer than the hard edge of Proof. She also produced the classic Australian film Muriel’s Wedding (1994) for her husband P.J. Hogan and co-wrote his soon-to-be released Who Shot Victor Fox.

The cinematographer McGrath continued working in Australia and filmed Muriel’s Wedding and Children of the Revolution (1996).

Hugo Weaving went on to become one of Australia’s biggest male stars, having one of the main parts in the classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). He also stars as the evil agent in the blockbuster The Matrix (1999) and its forthcoming sequels and recently appeared in the epic The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). He performed one of the voice-overs for the animal fable Babe (1995) and its sequel.

Genevieve Picot went on to mainly do television work, but had a role in Muriel’s Wedding and is featured in a film coming out next year called Max’s Dreaming.

Little need be said about Russell Crowe, currently one the biggest international Hollywood stars. After Proof, he made his name in Australia in Romper Stomper (1992) and The Sum of Us (1994) before breaking into Hollywood stardom in L.A. Confidential (1997), gaining an best actor Academy award nomination for his role in The Insider (1999) and then winning the best actor Academy award for Gladiator (2000). Last year, he was again nominated as best actor for the best picture-winning A Beautiful Mind and will be seen next year in Peter Weir’s Master and Commander written by Tom Stoppard.

Lynda House went on to produce Muriel’s Wedding with Moorhouse and produced the new Ned Kelley, starring Heath Ledger, which is coming out later this year.

IMPLICATIONS FOR AUSTRALIAN FILM

Proof demonstrates that intelligent and fresh ideas in small Australian films can still become relatively large successes considering their small beginning budget. The international acclaim and distribution of Proof is irreputable evidence of the enormous influence of international film festivals – sometimes, just being chosen to be screened at a big-name festival opens up all the doors for that film and for the careers of those involved with the film. Australian films are often looked to overseas for their “quirkiness,” their different or skewed perspectives from the norm – reviewers and audiences often go to them for a breath of fresh air. Proof delivered just this sort of picture, pleasing the crowds and their expectations with an intelligent and well-crafted piece of philosophical black comedy. The domestic success of Proof demonstrates that a large audience exists within Australia for this sort of thought-provoking film as well – though it must have Moorhouse’s skill for maintaining tension, suspense and audience enjoyment and attention to succeed. Proof still defines the majority of overseas Australian film successes in its unassuming nature and its focus on character and craft without relying on big-name actors or special effects – in the past years, Lantana and even Chopper have followed this strategy to acclaim and triumph internationally. Small Australian films will rarely compete on the same level as huge American and British productions, but a space remains for the “outsider cinema” to remain a successful and in-demand alternative. For dark humour, interesting characters and an altogether different cinematic experience, overseas audiences still turn to Australian films such as Proof.

WORKS CITED

Internet Movie Database – entry for Proof http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102721

Murray, Scott. Australian Cinema. Murdoch University, Perth: 1998.

O’Regan, Tom. Australian National Cinema. Routledge, London: 1996.

Proof dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1991.

Reid, Mary Anne. Long Shots to Favourites. AFI, Sydney: 1993.