Doubt

Doubt (08)
directed by John Patrick Shanley
***3/4

I love 7/8 of this film. Despite Shanley's track record, Doubt was compelling, real and wonderfully acted. The atmosphere was evocative, the pacing was engrossing. For much of the film, I was so intertwined with the characters and where their plot was going, that I expected this to be one of the most satisfying cinematic experiences of the year. Until I got to the last lines of the last scene. I don't mean the way the story wraps up — some critics and audience members have left disappointed at Shanley's refusal to tie this one up in a neat bow. I applauded that decision. What bothered me was the film's last two minutes, where the film went beyond "just right" and slid into the category of "too much." I'll return to the good 7/8 in a moment.

Looking back, it was almost inevitable that the film would stray into overdone territory — its title is symptomatic of the fact that it has grandiose, symbolic motives in mind. Come to think of it, I would have liked and trusted the film significantly more if it were named something less obvious and less commentating. Wouldn't you have looked askant at There Will Be Blood from the outset if it had been titled Ambition? Or what if the Bourne series were called Identity? Or Lars and the Real Girl were called Acceptance? You get the idea. This is the film's one failing: its moralism manages to lurk where it should be, beneath the surface of the plot and the characters; if only it hadn't reared its can't-miss-it head in those final moments.

Let me give the film the credit it's due, though — it earned that mark of 7/8 somehow. I suspect that it would have earned most of that even if there were no director. With actors as talented as Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis, why would you need one? Why would you need a script, for that matter? Just give them the Encyclopedia Britannica and let their inspired, provocative improv take over! Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but to be honest, this was probably the finest ensemble cast all year. And that's saying something.

The script was provocative and, for the most part, masterful.
The setting: a Catholic school in the Bronx, 1964. Autumn. Permanent autumn.
The conflict and the cast: the old guard vs. the new, with Meryl Streep's near-heartless harpy school mistress heading up the first group, and inquisitive, humane priest Philip Seymour Hoffman shepherding the second. Impressionable nun Amy Adams? Somewhere in the middle, leaning toward the new.
The inciting action: the young nun thinks it's possible that the priest has done something unseemly with the school's only African-American boy. Is she sure? See the title.
The back story: there's a reason one of the reasons the priest comes across as so humane. What's the reason? See the title.

Feeling a lot like an updated version of The Crucible, Doubt winds its way inevitably toward the showdown between Sister Aloysius (Streep) and Father Flynn (Hoffman). Will there be blood, excommunication or just spiritual angst? That's for me to know and you to find out.

Shanley, usually the sort of playwright/filmmaker to wear his roughdraft and his message on his sleeve (see Moonstruck and Joe vs. the Volcano for proof of that) has created something remarkable here: a contemporary, significant, polished play. Sure, I know this is a film, but at heart a play will always be a play — and Doubt succeeds at feeling a lot less stagey than Frost/Nixon, this year's other stage adaptation. In fact, it feels downright rooted in its physical space, the leaf-tinted trees, the stony spaces closing us gently into these characters' world. We all, at times, feel this silent claustrophobia just as surely as an African-American boy feels unwelcomed in 1960s suburbia.

There are moments of profound spiritual insight here, the sort that doubt provokes. There are just as many shallow spiritual moments, though, to me symptomatic of the style of worship and belief the community pursues. In fact, part of me wondered how much the Catholic style inevitably courts doubt, since it's always leaning its congregants' hopes onto human leadership. If we didn't know it before this play/film, we know it now: humankind can't bear quite that much reality.

But Doubt is bigger than Catholicism, and it speaks to all humans alike. We all feel imprisoned by the world we carve out for ourselves. We all fear what others will think when they know our failings and self-questioning. We all long to be loved and accepted in spite of all that. Curiously, though the entire plot is set in a church, we're never shown a Christ who soars into our world to save us from a space outside the brokenness, untouched by the skew of doubt but still painfully, lovingly touched by the feelings of our infirmities.

Comments

[John MacInnis]

V. and I just watched this last week and liked it very much. We both agreed that it was easy to empathize with all the characters when all was said and done.

I can see why you didn't like the last little bit. There might have been a more nuanced way to show the old nun's sorrow/guilt. But as it played out, the viewer saw that her actions (sin?) had results for both the priest and herself.

I agree with you, this really felt like a play. Could you recommend any other movies along these lines?

[Katherine]

I was afraid this movie would be exactly what you described. That is why I will wait for the DVD. Thanks for this great review; the way you keep the ending hidden is priceless.