Film Review--Doubt

Doubt
written and directed by John Patrick Shanley
based on the play by John Patrick Shanley
starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Joseph Foster, Paulie Litt, Matthew Marvin, Bridget Megan Clark

In John Patrick Shanley’s film adaptation of his own play Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Streep), the principal of the school attached to St. Nicholas Parish in the Bronx, has her convictions and little else to go on as she accuses Father Flynn (Hoffman) of impropriety with a twelve year old boy, ca. 1964.

The film opens with a sermon by Father Flynn where he espouses the idea that doubt can be just as powerful a unifying force as belief. He mentions the current political climate that has seen the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and appears to welcome the simple fact that the populace has been bound together by the singular factor of doubt. According to his presentation doubt is a genuine reaction to troubling times and ought to be understood in this context.

There is quite a bit of humor early on in this film and much of it has to do with Sister Aloysius’s fussiness and the awkwardness between her and Father Flynn.

Sister James (Adams) is a deceptively meek, earnest nun and teacher who possesses a simple belief in the edicts of Catholicism. As the film opens she’s not prone to posing very many questions about her faith, her church, or her decision to become a nun. They are pretty much sealed tight and her codified world suits her very much. Indeed, Sister Aloysius lambasts her for just wanting simplicity back after the turmoil with Father Flynn begins to go down. But she begins to experience grave misgivings about Sister Aloysius’s convictions regarding the manner and she eventually refuses to accept the elder sister’s verdict and forms one of her own. In many ways this is her story and it’s all quite legible on Amy Adams’s face. It’s a treasure trove of information and it reveals Sister James’s suffering through various stages of doubt that confounds her nearly to the point of breaking.

Meryl Streep captures all the pent up rage, loathing, and frustration that go into a life obsessively devoted to rules, regulations, and precise structure. She is so austere, exacting and frighteningly formal in her presentation. Nothing in her character’s life is ever going to be good enough to satisfy her craving for perfection. She hates ball point pens because she believes they make the students write like monkeys, she laments the loss of the fine art of penmanship, she holds Father Flynn in contempt for taking three cubes of sugar in his tea. Yet her longings make great sense within the structure of this film. She expects a certain order and Father Flynn represents to her a subversion of that order and it troubles her immensely. Her easily digestible world is threatened by his very person as he represents to her change that she steadfastly refuses to accept or even acknowledge.

The film has an exceedingly languid pace and events transpire in accordance with a particular time clock. There is a melancholy underpinning throughout the film that is exacerbated by the notion that a trusted man of the cloth may be responsible for something horrific and perfectly ghastly. Every moment is fraught with tension that builds up to a devastating climax where the titular doubt comes beckoning with fangs duly sharpened and ready to pounce and devour.

The young boy that is at the center of the conflict is named Donald (Foster) and he struggles to make his way at school. He is the first black student ever admitted and it’s not entirely clear if the treatment he receives at the hands of the other students is racially motivated or if they sense something else about him that sets him apart from them. His mother (Davis) suggests so much while communicating with Sister Aloysius about the relationship between her son and Father Flynn. Mrs. Miller does not want her son to be dragged into any potential and wide-spread controversy over the matter. She stands up for her son with conviction and tremendous class and stability. She does not want residual blame to fall on Donald for something, if it is true, that he did not, could not have, initiated. Davis gives a wrenching performance here and her intensity and fears are made manifest with clarity and decisiveness. There is a mesmeric quality to how she approaches Sister Aloysius, a woman she does not have any reason to trust more than Father Flynn. There is a sense that she doesn’t view Donald’s time with Father Flynn as being all that improper and that it is a good thing that he has showered her son with so much special attention. This stems from the fact that her husband beats Donald routinely because he senses that there is something inside Donald that he considers foul and vile and must be beaten out.

Sister Aloysius is a deeply flawed woman who is infinitely sympathetic. As she struggles with the information about Father Flynn afforded her by Sister James, she is faced with a bitter situation; she has no proof but should that be enough to stop her from taking him down? It isn’t a matter of whether he did it or not. Suspicion about these sort of things are enough to cast doubt in the minds of the parishioners and they will no longer be able to trust a man that they suspect might be capable of performing such hideous deeds. Sister Aloysius is not a patient woman who can simply let things ride. She has her convictions and she insists that the present situation be handled hastily and without hesitation. Father Flynn has irked her from the very beginning and she has at last hit upon an opportunity to make him suffer for what she perceives to be improper conduct of the most odious type.

The film offers a stark portrait of a specific mode of being. The nuns are quiet and eat their meals in relative silence. This is contrasted with Father Flynn and his fellow clerics who boisterously tell stories and drink beer and wine with their meal. The sisters drink milk and look truly miserable and somewhat forgotten. It is a signature of a different age that Father Flynn wants to play to. He wants Frosty the Snowman to be performed at the Christmas pageant. He wants to reach out more to the community to prove to them that the Church is no longer build upon a hierarchy that precludes the common touch. Sister Aloysius insists that the reason people go to church is to experience something different than themselves. It is not the Church’s role to connect with people on their level. She is clearly entranced by age old tradition and resents Father Flynn for wanting to change things around to reflect the present climate. It’s the basic disconnect between them and it informs the film in a direct manner.

The idea of a pedophile priest is something of a black eye to the Church. This film handles it gamely without ever actually coming out to say precisely what improper deeds were supposed to have gone on between Father Flynn and Donald. The viewer is left to imagine and it’s a most unsettling experience to have to entertain such difficult and painful thoughts. Still, it is a key component to this story and certainly adds tremendous gravity to the film’s conveyance of such potentialities.

The performances in this film are as good as cinema can offer the weary viewer. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives yet another solid performance that is all told with his eyes. They never seems to waver or show fear as his character confronts his accuser head on. The scenes between Hoffman and Meryl Streep are reminders of what can happen with two consummate pros go at each other in the ring. They both burn with a fiery rage that sears the screen and it’s a rare thing indeed to be so readily accosted with debris that is a necessary effect of the fallout between them. Hoffman is not one’s typical model of a priest: he drinks and smokes and his sermons are unorthodox to say the least. But he’s believable in this role and one wishes he were their Priest if Catholicism were ever an option. Meryl Streep is dynamic yet frightened in this role of a woman who doesn’t understand the way the world has morphed into something she despises. She feels the world is crashing around her and that even the wind is getting away from her. Streep conveys her character’s many misgivings in an understated way that doesn’t call attention to itself. Amy Adams is the face of purity and innocence. Adams readily conveys her character’s kindness and genuine affection for her students. She also shows a woman who is forced to face a dilemma the likes of which she has never encountered before. She does so patiently and with great care. Viola Davis is the hot ticket item in this film and everyone expects her to receive an Academy Award nomination for this performance. Davis gives a heartbreaking turn as a woman who is trying to figure out who to trust again. Mrs. Miller’s husband abuses her son by beating him black and blue and she feels helpless to stop it. One gets a sensation sense of Mrs. Miller’s taut anguish and this is all due to Davis’s restrained performance that doesn’t cross the line into sentimentality.

Overall, this film captures a mood of pressing despair as it formulates a story that might be about the myriad ways doubt emerges and how it can lead to both revelation and difficult, painful outcomes. The film does feel like a play at times but this works to contain the intensity of the emotions that are being expressed by the characters. The film does not manipulate one into feeling a particular way about what is being shown on the screen. It takes its time and allows us to form our own ideas about what we are seeing. All the characters are vivid, living beings with hopes and questions that provide the film with a depth that comes through in every scene. There is brooding quality to the film as very dark material is bandied about with great care and technique. One always feels locked in on the material and there are no moments where the narrative drags or loses traction. This is certainly a film to consider for the Academy Awards and all four principles deserve consideration as well. It’s just an example of what a simple, forthright story and top notch actors can still create in these dire times.