Doubt

Doubt (2008, Director: John Patrick Shanley): Directing his own Tony award-winning play, John Patrick Shanley is helped enorm­ously by a stellar cast, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. All four were recently hon­oured with Golden Globe nom­in­a­tions, as was Shanley’s script. The film, set in 1964 at a Catholic school in the Bronx, is essen­tially a battle of wills between Father Flynn (Hoffman), the cha­ris­matic and pro­gressive parish priest, and Sister Aloysius (Streep), the author­it­arian prin­cipal of the school. There are many reasons for their enmity, including the gen­eral segreg­a­tion of priests and nuns and their dif­fering views of tra­di­tion, but some­thing causes her to sus­pect Flynn of sexu­ally abusing a young black stu­dent. The title has many shades of meaning, but most obvi­ously, it is a seed planted by the older woman in the mind of Sister James (Adams), and ideal­istic young nun who looks up to Flynn.

There is much in the script to savour, and by the end, we’re really not sure what to think of each of our players, but the com­bin­a­tion of an intel­li­gent script and a cast of first-rate actors make this com­pel­ling from start to finish. And sur­pris­ingly, for a film dealing with such a heavy topic, there’s quite a lot of humour. Shanley’s deft touch is not sur­prising, con­sid­ering he’s working with his own material, but the art dir­ec­tion and cine­ma­to­graphy are just right as well, making this much more than just a filmed per­form­ance of the play.

Though I’m sure this will reward mul­tiple view­ings, it was inter­esting to me that the chil­dren in the film, espe­cially the one at the centre of the alleg­a­tions, are curi­ously pushed to the side­lines as the battle of wills plays out. As well, there is very little dis­cus­sion of faith in God, since it seems to be more about some of the insti­tu­tions of the Church. One of my half-formed the­ories is that the rigid sep­ar­a­tion of men and women in the Catholic clergy nat­ur­ally leads to sus­pi­cion and jeal­ousy on the part of the women, who have less power. As well, Sister Aloysius stood for a kind of virtue that has nothing to do with com­pas­sion, while Flynn was the man of weak­ness who can empathize with his con­greg­a­tion. I’ll be very curious to see how the Christian com­munity responds to the film.

If I have just one pet peeve, it’s that almost every single time you hear of a Catholic priest nowadays, it’s in rela­tion to some past sexual abuse alleg­a­tion. It’s a shame that this ste­reo­type ignores the many many fine men who served their con­greg­a­tions and schools self­lessly. I grew up attending Catholic schools in the 1970s, and hap­pily have no horror stories to report. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Official site of the film
Trailer on the Apple site

(9/10)

Tagged as: christianity, faith