1 of 2

Doubt Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material) Genre: Drama Theater release: December 12, 2008 by Miramax Directed by: John Patrick Shanley Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes Cast: Meryl Streep (Sister Aloysius Beauvier), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Father Brendan Flynn), Amy Adams (Sister James), Viola Davis (Mrs. Miller) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Doubt is a bundle of questions, chiseled to a point and encased in the trappings of a Catholic church era now nearly forgotten. It boasts one of the finest leading casts this year—seventeen Oscar nominations between them—and some heavy, yet relevant source material. Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning play, this Doubt was re-written for the screen and directed by its playwright, John Patrick Shanley.

The year is 1964, and Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the principal of St. Nicholas Church School, a Catholic grade school in the Bronx.  Sister Aloysius hovers hawk-like above the school, swooping in as an agent of wrath to punish wayward students via a well-timed smack to the crown of the head. She watches over the other nuns in the parish—including sweet, naïve eighth grade teacher Sister James (Amy Adams)—but it's unclear whether her care is borne of respect, or a preservation instinct for the parish's vanguard.

Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius Beauvier

On the other hand, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), pastor of the St. Nicholas parish, is a man of his time—which, not accidentally, is that of the Second Vatican Council—and a proponent of a kinder, friendlier church, one in which love and kindness prevail over fear.  "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty," Father Flynn preaches to his congregation, scandalizing Sister Aloysius, to whom doubt is equivalent to sin, or at least a questionable weakness of character. He exhorts his congregation toward tolerance of one another and away from gossip, and teaches the boys to shoot a free throw, wash under their fingernails, and not take it too seriously when girls don't want to dance with them.

One day, Sister Aloysius spots something that affirms her already-entrenched suspicions about Father Flynn. When Sister James later approaches her with a hesitant unease about the relationship between the priest and a young boy in her class—the first black student in the school, who has trouble with both bullies and his father—that hunch seems confirmed. Without a shred of evidence but convinced by her own certainty, Sister Aloysius sets out on a campaign to oust Father Flynn, but it's not without consequence—to herself, to Sister James, to the student in question, and to the parish.  The line between what is right, who is justified, and what has happened becomes less certain as it is more closely examined.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Brendan Flynn

Watching Doubt, you might imagine that it's really a backhanded commentary on something contemporary—politics, religion, or another topic du jour—which simply underlines the fact that doubt, manipulation, and tension toward authority are part of the human condition across temporal barriers. Doubt not only plays with questions about misgivings, certainty, and the lines between the two, but also confronts deeper issues of authority and its proper subversion, as well as whether wrongdoing is ever okay, if it's in the service of a greater good. These ideas are just as resonant in your hometown today as they were in the Bronx in 1964.

Films adapted from plays almost always betray their roots to bad effect, and the action often becomes boxed into a few rooms and excessively talky, with obvious breaks in action, remnants of the limitations of the stage. Doubt was a play of Spartan proportions—four characters, and few scenes with more than two actors—and luckily, it's shifted from stage to screen with a little more success. There's still some imaginary theater bounding-boxes, and since everything is discussed but little is shown, the added bodies in the film function more as stage pieces than actual three-dimensional humans, but the story moves around, and as a whole, works onscreen.

Amy Adams as Sister James

The flaw in Doubt, which likely stems from its stage roots, is that it throws its symbolism around too heavily (in fact, the theatrical version's subtitle was "A Parable"). A cat's about to find the mouse in the house; rainstorms repeatedly beat down on characters at the moment they experience spiritual turmoil; a stained-glass window with an all-seeing eye watches over the hallway; windows are continually found cracked open; and Sister Aloysius grimly welcomes a visitor to her office with device for screwing light bulbs into ceiling fixtures, simultaneously reminiscent of a triton-bearing sea king and a certain darker entity with a pitchfork. The less-than-subtle parallels seem not to credit the audience with much perception.

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page