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December 11, 2008 MOVIE REVIEW | 'DOUBT' Between Heaven and Earth, Room for Ambiguity

By MANOHLA DARGIS

The air is thick with paranoia in “Doubt,” but nowhere as thick, juicy, sustained or sustaining as Meryl Streep’s performance as a distrustful nun in John Patrick Shanley’s screen adaptation of his stage play. Wearing flowing black robes, a bonnet that squats on her head like an upside-down Easter basket and the kind of spectacles Mr. Pickwick probably wore to read his papers, Ms. Streep blows in like a storm, shaking up the story’s reverential solemnity with gusts of energy and comedy. The performance may make no sense in the context of the rest of the film, but it is — forgive me, Father — gratifying nunsense.

Although the play, which pivots on accusations of child molestation, was first staged in 2004 — two years after the Roman Catholic Church sex-abuse scandals erupted in America — it unfolds at a historical remove in 1964. Sister Aloysius (Ms. Streep), the principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, comes to suspect that her supervisor, Father Flynn (a tamped-down Philip Seymour Hoffman), has developed an erotic interest or worse in one of their charges, Donald (Joseph Foster II), the school’s first and only black student. Shored up by the tentative suspicions of a younger nun, Sister James (an unsteady Amy Adams), Sister Aloysius begins circling Father Flynn, going in for the kill. Sister James has doubts. Sister Aloysius has, well, none.

As its title announces, “Doubt” isn’t about certainty, but ambiguity, that no man’s land between right and wrong, black and white. This gray zone paradoxically can be easier to grapple with on the stage, where ideas sometimes range more freely because they are not tethered to representations of the real world. Mainstream moviemaking, with its commercial directives and slavish attachment to narrative codes, by contrast, isn’t particularly hospitable to ambiguity. It insists on clear parameters, tidy endings, easy answers and a world divided into heroes and villains, which may help explain why Mr. Shanley’s film feels caught between two mediums and why Ms. Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life or at least dramatic realism.

Despite its theological asides and weighty moral stakes, “Doubt” essentially boils down to a shell game: you think you see the pea under this or that shell, but the prize (answer) remains tauntingly out of reach. So does Father Flynn, a character who for a long stretch appears above reproach: a good, caring, forward-thinking man whose only crime seems to be tolerance. When he suggests that the school add a secular song to its Christmas lineup as a way of reaching out to the community, Sister Aloysius reacts as if he had suggested human sacrifice instead. That he seems to embody the spirit of reform handed down by Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965, makes him all the more sympathetic.

Directing from his own script, Mr. Shanley chips away at this sympathy, pulling the story and your feelings this way and that. One of the most eccentric moments in the film occurs when Father Flynn, after admonishing some male students about their dirty fingernails, shows off his long, carefully manicured nails. Mr. Shanley complicates this feeling of gender ambiguity later when Father Flynn, having gone to Sister Aloysius’s office for a meeting, sits behind her desk without asking permission, an assertion of power that opens a fissure in his easygoing facade and says more about the church and gender than any of their increasingly heated exchanges. Mostly, though, the characters talk, and Mr. Shanley throws a frame around their heads.

Words make the world go ’round here through repetitions, indirection, allusion as well as a cunning deployment of the barely said and the flat-out unspeakable. (The word “pedophilia” is never uttered.) When Sister James tells Sister Aloysius that Father Flynn has “taken an interest” in Donald, the words reverberate like a struck bell. Later, when Donald’s mother (Viola Davis, shaking the film up with a few extravagantly mucousy minutes) explains to Sister Aloysius why she wants to keep her son at school, no matter what the truth about the priest, her words resonate partly because they remain veiled by shame, propriety, fear, inequality, pain. What are you telling me? Sister Aloysius demands of the stunned mother, though it’s clear they both know the answer.

Mr. Shanley has nothing deep to say about the church and its sex scandals, and he’s still largely using words and more words, despite the tilted camera angles and pretty pictures. But the words are good, solid, at times touching. His work with the actors is generally fine, though it’s a mystery what he thought Ms. Streep, with her wild eyes and an accent as wide as the Grand Concourse, was doing. Her outsize performance has a whiff of burlesque, but she’s really just operating in a different register from the other actors, who are working in the more naturalistic vein of modern movie realism. She’s a hoot, but she’s also a relief, because, for some of us, worshiping Our Lady of Accents is easier on the soul than doing time in church.

“Doubt” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Intimations of child sexual abuse.

DOUBT

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley; based on his play; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Dylan Tichenor; music by Howard Shore; production designer, David Gropman; produced by Scott Rudin and Mark Roybal; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.

WITH: Meryl Streep (Sister Aloysius Beauvier), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Father Brendan Flynn), Amy Adams (Sister James), Viola Davis (Mrs. Miller), Joseph Foster II (Donald Miller), Alice Drummond (Sister Veronica), Audrie Neenan (Sister Raymond), Susan Blommaert (Mrs. Carson), Carrie Preston (Christine Hurley) and John Costelloe (Warren Hurley).

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Doubt Bless you, father, for you have sinned. Or maybe you haven't

Release Date: 2008

Ebert Rating: ****

/ / / Dec 10, 2008 by Roger Ebert

A Catholic grade school could seem like a hermetically sealed world in 1964. That's the case with St. Nicholas in the Bronx, ruled by the pathologically severe principal Sister Aloysius, who keeps the students and nuns under her thumb and is engaged in an undeclared war with the new parish priest. Their issues may seem to center around the reforms of Vatican II, then still under way, with Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as the progressive, but for the nun I believe it's more of a power struggle. The pope's infallibility seems, in her case, to have descended to the parish level.

Some will say the character of Sister Aloysius, played without a hint of humor by Meryl Streep, is a caricature. In my eight years of Catholic school, not a one of the Dominican nuns was anything but kind and dedicated, and I was never touched, except by Sister Ambrosetta's thunking forefinger to the skull in first grade. But I clearly remember being frightened by Sister Gilberta, the principal; being sent to her office in second or third grade could loosen your bowels. She never did anything mean. She just seemed to be able to.

Sister Aloysius of "Doubt" hates all inroads of the modern world, including ballpoint pens. This is accurate. We practiced our penmanship with fountain pens, carefully heading every page "JMJ" -- for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of course. Under Aloysius' command is the sweet young Sister James (Amy Adams, from "Junebug"), whose experience in the world seems limited to what she sees out the convent window. Gradually during the autumn semester, a Situation develops.

There is one African-American student at St. Nicholas, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), and Father Flynn encourages him in sports and appoints him as an altar boy. This is all proper. Then Sister James notes that the priest summons the boy to the rectory alone. She decides this is improper behavior, and informs Aloysius, whose eyes narrow like a beast of prey. Father Flynn's fate is sealed.

But "Doubt" is not intended as a docudrama about possible sexual abuse. Directed by John Patrick Shanley from his Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play, it is about the title word, doubt, in a world of certainty. For Aloysius, Flynn is certainly guilty. That the priest seems innocent, that Sister James comes to believe she was mistaken in her suspicions, means nothing. Flynn knows a breath of scandal would destroy his career. And that is the three-way standoff we watch unfolding with precision and tension.

Something else happens. The real world enters this sealed, parochial battlefield. Donald's mother (Viola Davis) fears her son will be expelled from the school. He has been accused of drinking the altar wine. Worse, of being given it by Father Flynn. She appeals directly to Sister Aloysius, in a scene as good as any I've seen this year. It lasts about 10 minutes, but it is the emotional heart and soul of "Doubt," and if Viola Davis isn't nominated by the Academy, an injustice will have been done. She goes face to face with the pre-eminent film actress of this generation, and it is a confrontation of two equals that generates terrifying power.

Doubt. It is the subject of the sermon Father Flynn opens the film with. Doubt was coming into the church and the United States in 1964. Would you still go to hell if you ate meat on Friday? After the assassination of Kennedy and the beginnings of Vietnam, doubt had undermined American certainty in general. What could you be sure of? What were the circumstances? The motives? The conflict between Aloysius and Flynn is the conflict between old and new, between status and change, between infallibility and uncertainty. And Shanley leaves us doubting. I know people who are absolutely certain what conclusion they should draw from this film. They disagree. "Doubt" has exact and merciless writing, powerful performances and timeless relevance. It causes us to start thinking with the first shot, and we never stop. Think how rare that is in a film.

Cast & Credits

Sister Aloysius Meryl Streep Father Flynn Philip Seymour Hoffman Sister James Amy Adams Mrs. Miller Viola Davis Donald Joseph Foster II

Miramax Films presents a film directed and written by John Patrick Shanley, based on his play. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for for thematic material).

The following article is located at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/decemberweb-only/doubt.html

Christianity Today, December (Web-only), 2008

MOVIE REVIEW Doubt Alissa Wilkinson [ posted 12/12/2008 ]

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.

But this doesn't diminish the film's triumphs too much. Cinematographer Roger Deakins apparently hasn't set down the camera this year— his other 2008 releases include the beautifully shot movies The Reader and Revolutionary Road—and at this point I'd happily watch grass grow, as long as he was behind the camera. Doubt, with its black-clad figures set against rich greens, blues, and brick reds, is exquisite in its simplicity. This is a period piece, set in a distinctive time in the Catholic church when nuns wore Victorian-style bonnets and ate in silence while the priests dug heartily into a raucous dinner, and Deakins' stills of this time could be framed and hung in a museum alongside the Dutch masters. Sister Aloysius suspects Father Flynn of molesting a boy

Amy Adams is the weakest member of the cast, not because she's a poor actress but because she is once again playing Amy Adams—I hope she's given the opportunity to break out of the doe-eyed role soon. On the other hand, Viola Davis, in a riveting turn as the student's mother, has only one scene, but it turns out to be the moment where the foundations shift, and she works in emotionally stunning contrast to Sister Aloysius.

We've seen the protean Hoffman play scary, brilliant, creepy, lovable, and pathetic before, but this is one of his most likeable characters. Here he gets to play someone that, depending on your opinion of his honesty, might embody all of those, that swings between kind benevolence and anger—for either his reputation, or for righteousness's sake. But despite his firm standing in the upper echelons of contemporary actors, he's not quite a match for Streep here. She's a bit like that symbolic cat—prowling for one wrong move, hissing and spitting and snarling, with unblinking eyes and a taste for blood—but this guise is stretched so thinly over a concealed vulnerability that cracks are beginning to show, and those moments are startling for how they challenge what we believe about her character.

Doubt is not going to please some moviegoers. True: the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed. True: not a whole lot actually happens onscreen. True: it's a little infuriating to be left scratching your head about what really went on. But to the engaged viewer, Doubt brings assumptions about people and circumstances to the surface, and then challenges those assumptions with uncertainty and, yes, doubt. Nobody loses, but nobody wins, either.

Talk About It Discussion starters

1. Do you think Father Flynn did anything wrong? Why or why not? Is his guilt or innocence the main point of the story? Discuss.

2. Father Flynn tells Sister Aloysius, "We are the same." Assuming he is telling the truth about his confessions, how would John 8:2-11 apply to this story?

3. If Father Flynn is lying, and has something to hide, are Sister Aloysius' actions justified?

4. Mrs. Miller tells Sister Aloysius, "You know the rules, Sister, but that don't cover it." What does that mean? Read Matthew 5:21-48. What is Jesus' response to rules?

5. How do we interpret this story in the light of Romans 2:1-6?

The Family Corner For parents to consider

Doubt is rated PG-13 for thematic material. The story deals with implied pedophilia and homosexuality, but nothing is shown and the characters talk very obtusely about these subjects, so they're mostly troubling in light of more recent church scandals. While there's little subject matter that's patently offensive, the themes are inappropriate for younger children, but it would make good discussion fodder for older teens and up.

1. Plugged In 2. Crosswalk 3. Catholic News Service 4. Past the Popcorn