Doubt

Rating

Director

John Patrick Shanley

Screenplay

John Patrick Shanley (His Play)

Length

104 min.

Starring

Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Alice Drummond, Audrie J. Neenan, Joseph Foster, Mike Roukis

MPAA Rating

PG-13 for thematic material.

Review

We’re expected to form our own opinions about what transpires over the course of the film Doubt, yet so many nagging details seem to push the story in one specific direction. However, is that just our personal beliefs at play and is that certainty merely an attempt to erase doubt from our own minds?

John Patrick Shanley crafted the stage play that won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2004 to be a catalyst of discussion into how we use our certainty as a weapon to challenge that with which we disagree even when contrary evidence is presented to us. It’s part of our human nature to jump to conclusions and ride those conclusions to the bitter end.

The film adaptation tries very hard to bring that pensive, “did he or didn’t he” quandary to regular movie folks yet fails to truly present a balanced case.

Doubt is the tale of a strict Catholic school principal whose parochial head she suspects of having an affair with one of the young boys at the school while a trusting fellow nun acts as a kind of balance between the two.

Meryl Streep continues her streak of interesting performance as Sister Aloysius the head of the school. She blends so effortlessly into the role that while you can’t forget you’re watching Meryl, you still can’t help but feel you’re also watching someone completely different. The normal self-effacing, nonchalant actress takes on the guise of a withered, mistrusting crone whose delight it seems to be to persecute and correct those whose actions she believes are morally reprehensible. The only part of her performance that felt entirely unconvincing was here final-scene breakdown, which seemed strangely ill fitting.

As her chief target, Philip Seymour Hoffman takes on the role of priest. His Father Flynn is a jovial, boys-club-styled pastor whose very presence seems to suggest guilt. While that’s not entirely Hoffman’s fault (he is, after all, an actor who has taken on quite a few smarmy villain roles), the decision to cast him the role was a poor one. There are a number of other actors who could have conveyed a sense of passion and friendliness that might have allowed the audience to more effectively support the story’s central premise of to doubt his involvement. However, it wasn’t the casting alone that was the problem.

Injecting herself into the issue, as witness and faithful servant, Amy Adams continues her long tradition of taking on sympathetic, optimistic characters. It’s a bit grating at times, but the naturalness of that fit for this role plays far better than we might have otherwise expected.

When directing your own screenplay, the most difficult challenge is distancing yourself from the work and looking at it with a balanced eye. Shanley tries his best to keep the narrative from bogging down in the details, but film is an entirely visual medium. Unlike the stage where performances, and not shot selection, determine the effectiveness of the material, film relies more heavily on mise-en-scene to convey ideas, though performance can assist.

One of the film’s more convincing moments, the only scene in which Viola Davis appears, features the actress as the mother of a supposedly-molested child, the film’s central issue. The mother, who understands how the turmoil of the times (the film I set during the early days of the Civil Rights movement) renders her son’s skin color as a detriment in her desire to see him get a better education and escape what she expects will become of his life. Her grim determination and fierce spirit sell the movie in ways that even Streep can’t manage. She reveals details about herself and her child that, if the surrounding material were modified in the slightest, might fully entrench the desired sense of doubt in the audience. Davis’ brief performance is miraculous despite its brevity.

Personal philosophy may have more to do with how we perceive the film than the film itself does. There are moments that convince me of the priest’s guilt, yet others have seen the same moments and been more easily able, or at least more willing, to explain them away. Is it the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? Or is it the dichotomy between realism and perception? Whatever your thoughts on the subject, it is not the doubt or the certainty that matters, but how you come to your conclusions. It is how you perceive reality and how you apply that to your decisions that is important.

When watching the film, keep these ideas in mind. Never let absolute certainty shut out doubt. For, as Father Flynn intones during his opening sermon, “doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.”

Review Written

February 23, 2009