Doubt
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Directed by: John Patrick Shanley
Starring:
Meryl Streep - Sister Aloysius Beauvier
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Father Brendan Flynn
Amy Adams - Sister James
Viola Davis - Mrs. Miller
Doubt is a perfect example of how an adapted stage play can and cannot work. On the one hand, you get your powerful performances that had to command an audience sitting in the nosebleed seats now blown up to thirty feet tall. If an actor blows you away on stage, odds are they can disintegrate you on screen. On the other hand, the set-ups tend to be stage-y with two or three characters talking to each other in a single room and a story carried entirely by dialogue and staging rather than non-spoken action, flashbacks, or any special effects whatsoever. That's not to say that any of those things they can't be done—they're just not done with Doubt and that's not a bad thing because it puts all the attention on two of the best actors working today: Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Set at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, Doubt revolves around the attempts of unforgiving and power-hungry nun Sister Aloysius (Streep) to get the parish's priest, Father Flynn (Hoffman), fired over innuendos of sexual misconduct with a young black student. The film is almost like a trial and casts us as the jury, hearing arguments from both sides as we try to decide if Flynn is the pederast priest or if Aloysius is a power-mad nun whose simply doesn't care for Flynn's progressive values.
Doubt plays at a great many intersections of faith, gender, race, age, morality, and truth. It's the kind of film I'd love to watch with a class of high school seniors and have them discuss the ideas presented. The trade-off is that you get it all in one viewing. There's no need to go back decipher meaning or try to untwist a character's intent. Still, Doubt is a film that happily lives in ambiguity and for an active viewer, that's a great place for any drama to dwell.
The film is also another showcase for Meryl Streep's boundless talent. I will be shocked if she doesn't pick up her fifteenth Oscar nomination for her work as Aloysius. The character is smarmy, harsh, condescending, acid-tongued and completely engaging. She's that character you love to hate and even her small acts of kindness, like protecting an old, blind nun, feel self-serving and from a place of strength rather than benevolence or compassion. Just as wonderful is Hoffman, keeping his character and our feelings about him ambivalent. I can't imagine any other major actor in this role because Hoffman can play the victim as easily as the perpetrator along with everything in between.
However, the film begins to falter as it reaches its conclusion. Amy Adams plays a fellow nun who's highly naïve and is almost a surrogate for the audience as she's torn between believing Aloysius and Flynn, but she inexplicably disappears from almost the entire third act and her absence is felt in part because of the importance of her role and in part because Adams does such a great job with the part. Then, in the final scene, Aloysius makes a confession that is so out of character and spontaneous I would have been less surprised if she had announced she was actually Rastafarian and now had to ride away on a unicorn to a field of moonbeams. Then again, it is Meryl Streep playing the role so she could probably sell me on that but I didn't know what to do with the film's real twist.
Nevertheless, Doubt is worth seeing for Streep and Hoffman alone. It's an engaging, adult drama that uses mature ideas rather than graphic situations. Writer/Director John Patrick Shanley has taken his play to the movies and while he doesn't use the screen, he doesn't waste his words or his talented performers.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
12.9.08