Film / Proof (1991)

Proof is a 1991 Australian romantic Dramedy written and directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. The film stars Hugo Weaving, Geneviève Picot and Russell Crowe.

The story concerns the day-to-day life of Martin, a blind photographer. Through a series of flashbacks, Martin is shown as a child, distrustful of his own mother. She describes to him the garden outside his bedroom window. She tells him that someone is raking leaves, but he can't hear the sound and angrily decides she is lying to him. This childhood experience strongly affects Martin as an adult, as he anticipates that sighted people will take advantage of his blindness to lie to him, or worse yet, pity him.

As a result Martin is a resentful, bitter man who spends his days taking photographs of the world around him, then having various people describe them. He uses these photographs and the Braille descriptions before he stamps on them as "proof" that the world around him really is as others describe it to him.

He also takes secret pleasure in rebuking the romantic advances of Celia, his housekeeper. Celia harbours a deep-seated and obsessive crush on Martin, and takes out her frustration at her unrequited love by tormenting Martin in small ways, such as rearranging the furniture in his house. Martin keeps Celia around because her love and hatred of him means he knows she can't pity him.

One day Martin encounters Andy, and is pleased with the depth and detail with which Andy describes his photos. The two fast become close friends, and Martin soon comes to trust him implicitly. The jealous Celia is threatened by Andy's increasing presence in Martin's life and begins to scheme against him...

The film contains proofs of the following tropes:

• Accidental Murder: Of Ugly the cat, but still. Martin crashes a stack of crates over the poor animal while stumbling through the alley, killing it. Or so it looks. The cat actually survived and is only dazed, so when Andy tries to call Martin out for killing the cat, Martin quickly realises the animal is still alive, so they both take it to the vet.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Celia's is, but she doesn't really mind that much. Martin is distant towards people, and the fact that their relationship is one hell of The Masochism Tango, means she never really gets any sort of reciprocation. Andy finds the hard way that his feelings toward Celia are one-sided and she used him for her schemes.
• Black Comedy: After a short stint of Blind Driving, Martin slams directly into the police cruiser trying to stop him, with Andy driving shotgun. When the officer angrily jumps to the driver's door, Martin instantly drops this bomb.
  My eyes! I can't see!
  [Smash Cut to ER, since the police officer bought the lie]
• Bookends: The first and last scene with Celia has her leaving Martin's house, but only after setting up some object in an inconvenient place, so Martin will stumble over it.
• Bros Before Hoes: Part of the reason why Celia feels jealous over Andy is feeling treated by Martin's attention and budging friendship with the man. In the end, both Martin and Andy find out that they value their friendship more than any kind of interaction or relationship with Celia.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Celia wants Martin just for herself. The second she realises Andy exists and Martin spends time with him, ignoring her even more, she starts plotting to get rid of him.
• The Confidant: Andy becomes one to Martin, being a person Martin trusts without any issues, and thus being useful to describe Martin's photos.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Andy is torn between his friendship with Martin and the steady advances made by Celia towards him. Ultimately, he's forced to pick a side.
• Deaf Composer: Martin is a blind photographer. However, rather than this being an artistic statement, his photos exist as the titular proof of the world around him and how others perceive it.
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Thanks to his mother and the complicated relationship with her, Martin distrusts women on principle. No misogyny, just a deeply ingrained distrust of females.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Martin is perfectly fine with the fact he's blind, thank you very much. His relationship with Celia is also built on this: if he can pity her, she can't pity him, and that's fine for Martin.
• Double Entendre: Celia is describing to Martin the reason why Bill, his dog, is going missing in the park - in reality, it's Celia sneaking there, calling Bill and watching in delight Martin's futile struggle to call his dog back, while being obsessed with Martin herself.
  It's probably a bitch... you know, a bitch in heat.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Nope, including being called out on this. Celia is portrayed as an abusive monster when she effectively blackmails Martin to first go on a date with her and then forces him to go to bed with her. Did we mention Martin is blind, which she further uses against him?
• Drive-In Theater: Andy takes Martin to one to "describe" things on screen. They are watching a Slasher Movie.
• Freudian Excuse: Due to his assumption that his own mother was lying to him, Martin grew up to be incredibly distrustful towards people, and women in particular. His childhood experiences are also the reason why he's so self-restrained, as he was never properly explained why he shouldn't be touching people. His photographs exist as the titular proof that the things he experienced were real and that others saw them.
• Honesty Aesop: Martin expects only one thing from people: the truth and only the truth. Andy quickly finds out that even a minor lie can complicate his life beyond any reason, and the conflict is brewing on the basis that Celia engineered for him to lie to Martin. Andy also bitterly learns that Celia seduced him without feeling anything towards him, for the sole purpose of destroying his and Martin's friendship. On the flip side, the story is also about Martin learning how impractical his demand is.
  Martin: I'm a blind man. I'm not like other people. You can't know how important truth is to me.
  Andy: I do know. Shit, Martin, everybody lies. But not all the time, and that's the point.
• Hyper-Awareness: Realistic variant with a man who was born blind and spent his entire life relying on other senses. Martin even discusses this with Andy, pointing out all the tiny details of the vet's waiting room or the fact how he operates in day-to-day life, using various cues (including even warmth of the sun rays) to navigate around.
• Internal Reveal: Viewers know beforehand that Andy got tricked by Celia into lying to Martin and then about their budding romance, but Martin only learns much later on.
• Insidious Rumor Mill: The second Celia learns about Andy's existence, she starts to manipulate both Martin and Andy to create a rift between them while also tricking Andy to lie to Martin, fully aware of Martin's trust issues.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: After Celia makes Andy lie about the content of a photo, he quickly finds out that maintaining that lie sucks... while she drags him deeper and deeper into lying to Martin.
• Liar Revealed: An elaborate, engineered case. First, Celia makes sure that there is an uncomfortable photo for Andy to describe, and once it's "mislabeled" by Martin, she makes sure that photo reaches a third party (Martin's veterinarian) to be properly described to Martin and thus destroy his trust in Andy. By the time Martin comes home, obviously furious, she has intentionally had Andy visit her and have sex with her, adding another lie to the list of Andy's faults.
• Love Martyr: Celia's relationship with and to Martin is built on the fact she actually enjoys being constantly rebuked.
• Love Triangle: Zig-Zagged. Celia seduces Andy, but not out of love or any actual feelings towards him. Instead, she wants to get him into as much trouble as possible to destroy the friendship between Andy and Martin. Martin, meanwhile, has a very messy relationship with Celia. He and Andy quickly become Heterosexual Life-Partners. Andy, on his part, gets Honey Trapped by Celia, but his feelings towards her are genuine, just like his friendship with Martin.
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: The reason why Andy lied in the first place was to prevent Martin from finding out Celia was deliberately tormenting him. Of course, he has personal stakes to it, too, but whenever the subject comes up later on, Andy consistently says that he did it so Martin won't feel bad.
• A Man Is Always Eager: Celia exploits the fact that Andy is a rather simple guy and starts to seduce him right from their first meeting.
• The Masochism Tango: The Martin-Celia relationship. She is clearly and obviously in love with him - except that she is also possessive, clingy and obsessive. He takes pleasure in the fact that he can deny her any kind of affection and be as independent from her as feasible, yet he keeps her as his housekeeper.
• My Beloved Smother: Played with. Martin's mother wasn't evil or overbearing, but she did struggle with raising a blind child, and he perceived her as incredibly controlling and, much worse for him, untrustworthy and lying just to make him feel better.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Celia, when trying to get Martin at ease with her, brings up that they are both lonely and both are motherless and that obviously makes them not so different, him and her. Of course, she is the only one to see it that way.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • Ugly the cat is fine. And no, Martin isn't trying to troll Andy or guilt-trip him to get him to the vet despite how the cat looks like - the vet manages to get it up and going.
  • When left alone for a bit in a Drive-In Theater, Martin gets bored and starts rummaging through Andy's car, while also "looking" directly in front of him. The guy in the next car thinks Martin is just staring directly into his car and his girlfriend. Then Martin picks up an entire leaf of condoms, trying to figure out what they are by touch, all in the view of the guy from the next car, who takes him for a pervert. Things escalate from there.
  • In the end, Martin shows up in the kitchen to say sorry to Celia and apologise to her for everything, smiling. She's pleasantly surprised, thinking she finally got everything she wanted... and then he just as happily fires her, finally finding courage to do so.
• Odd Friendship: A fiercely independent blind man and a street-smart working-class no-gooder.
• The Only One I Trust: Andy very quickly becomes the only person Martin truly trusts, as a result of him being an impartial outsider and a very straightforward and direct person by character.
  Martin: I just took a photo of a leaf, because you told me there was one there and I believed you.
  [As the scene ends, Martin leans and reaches for the leaf, presenting it to Andy instead of saying anything]
• Operation: Jealousy: Why Celia starts to seduce Andy - she knows she will destroy the trust between him and Martin and thus get rid of him, getting Martin's full attention back.
• The Promise: Martin makes Andy promise him that he will never, ever lie to him, especially not when describing his photos. Keeping this promise becomes far more problematic for Andy than he ever anticipated.
• "The Reason I Suck" Speech: After having sex with Celia for the first time, Andy comes to Martin while he's walking Bill in the park and has a conversation with his friend, explaining that he's a no-gooder who isn't exactly the best person and listing all his various faults and deficiencies. Martin makes it clear to Andy that he really doesn't care because he can trust him without any issue.
• Regretful Traitor: Andy feels like shit over betraying Martin's trust. Celia fully anticipated this - if not Martin will get mad at Andy over lying to him, then Andy's own conscience will make him leave.
• The Reveal: Martin's mother wasn't lying - there was a man raking leaves by the birdbath. We only learn in the very finale, when Andy describes the photo closely to the way Martin's mother described the garden to him when he was a child.
• Room Full of Crazy: After blackmailing Martin to come on a date with her, Celia eventually sits Martin in her living room. The camera pans out to show Martin, and the entire wall behind him is covered in dozens of his photos. Martin, being blind, never learns about this. Much later, Andy ends up in this room and is both terrified and confused by what he sees, but that's also the moment he realises he was played the whole time by Celia.
  Celia: I'm a bit of a photographer myself.
  Martin: Really? What do you photograph?
  [The camera switches to show all the photos of Martin around him]
  Celia: Things I love.
• Simple-Minded Wisdom: What Martin likes about Andy - he might be Book Dumb, but he's still very perceptive, expressive and direct with his opinions, which is exactly the sort of qualities Andy is looking for to describe his photos.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Celia wants Martin, all for herself, and isn't interested in anyone else.
• Stalker Shrine: Celia has her entire living room decorated with photos of Martin.
• Suddenly Shouting: After finding out that Celia and Andy are together - and right after finding out that Andy lied to him about the photo's content - Martin tells them both to leave his house when finding them in the middle of a tryst.
  Martin: How many times do I have to tell you? GET OUT!
• Title Drop: Martin and Andy have an entire conversation over the titular concept of proof and Martin's photos.
  Andy: What're you doing?
  Martin: I'm labelling it.
  Andy: Why?
  Martin: Proof.
  Andy: Of what?
  Martin: That's what's in the photograph was really there. [...] But this [He holds out a photo] is proof that what I sensed is what you saw through your eyes. The truth.
• Toyota Tripwire: Martin does this accidentally to Andy, while Andy is in a middle of a brawl.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: This might be Martin's life creed. He's incredibly distrusting due to being blind and demands from people nothing but the purest honesty. He throws Andy out after finding out he lied to him about the photo content. For him, lying is the worst thing a person can do to him, especially when out of pity.
  I'm a blind man. I'm not like other people. You can't know how important the truth is to me.
• Troll:
  • This is easily the most defining trait of Celia. In her Establishing Character Moment, she deliberately puts objects in places for Martin to trip over (since he's blind, it's a big deal for stuff to be in fixed positions). She later trolls Andy by "stealing" the attention of Bill the dog in the park, right when Andy was sure he's going to be Licked by the Dog.
  • Martin himself gets the attention of a waitress by deliberately pouring himself half a bottle of wine on the table, raising the bottle way too high and missing the glass on purpose, only stopping when she's by his table. He instantly gives his order before she can say or do anything. To drive point home, he later expertly pours himself and Andy a glass of port, explaining to his friend how he does it without ever overfilling.
• Unwitting Pawn: Celia starts to seduce Andy right off the bat, for the purpose of driving him away from Martin. Martin suffers a great deal of distress as a result, while Andy only finds out he was played once Celia achieves her goal, making him leave her in disgust.
• The Vamp: Celia seduces Andy just to get back on Martin and destroy their friendship.
• Was It All a Lie?: Martin thinks his mother lied to him to make him feel better and "because she can", making him question not only the world she describes to him, but even the presence of other people and objects.

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