Plot: In Chicago, on the day of her twenty-seventh birthday, Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) receives her sister Claire (Hope Davis) from New York City for the funeral of their father Robert (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who passed away a couple of days before. Robert was a brilliant mathematician that became bughouse. Catherine had lived with him for the last five years, quitting her studies on the faculty. She is concerned about having inherited his insanity. A mathematician at the University of Chicago, Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal) is researching Robert's notebooks, trying to find any brilliant proof that Robert might have produced in a moment of lucidity. When Hal has a one night stand with Catherine, she gives a notebook to him containing the development of a unique mathematics theory that Catherine claims she developed. Hal and Claire do not believe her, until the truth is disclosed.
Alternative Plot: Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a 27-year-old grieving after the loss of her father (Anthony Hopkins), a genius mathematician whose mind gradually deteriorated from mental illness. With her sister, Claire (Hope Davis), urging Catherine to leave their family home, and an ambitious student (Jake Gyllenhaal) searching through her father's notes, Catherine struggles to keep her composure and her sanity in this drama adapted from the stage play by David Auburn.
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