Ryan McNeil
You know when you go to the supermarket and see those pyramid-like displays of soup cans? There’s always one can in the structure that can bring the whole thing down in one shot. That one can – that’s doubt.
Sometimes that’s all it takes. Just a little bit of doubt to completely ruin something and make a gigantic mess.
DOUBT is the story of life at St. Nicholas school and Parrish in 1964 New York. The state of the Catholic church is in flux in the 1960’s, with changes coming to centuries’ worth of tradition. At St. Nicholas, the embodiment of these changes is a priest named Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). He is charismatic, and is more ‘of the people’ than he is a stoic vessel to God. On the other side, holding steadfast to the tried-and-true, is the school’s principal Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep). Changing her mind on methods and structure is about as easy as turning around the Queen Mary.
Caught in the middle of their crossfire is young Sister James (Amy Adams). She clearly wants to follow Father Flynn’s lead and embrace the new, but also clearly fears Sister Aloysius too much, and cannot argue with her air of certainty. The situation between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius is worsened when Sister James feels the Father is paying too much attention to one particular student and alter boy. She voices her concern to Sister Aloysius who immediately concludes the worst.
Every bit of evidence is circumstantial, but for a stubborn soul like Sister Aloysius, it might as well be DNA collected from the crime scene. Not even a meeting with the boy’s mother (Viola Davis) can dull her accusation – despite the parent’s pleas to let it go. Yes, Sister Aloysius is that certain that Father Flynn has done something wrong, and is ready to take him down because of it.
DOUBT is a one hundred minute acting clinic. The four leads play off each other perfectly, and stay grounded especially during some scenes that would tempt a lesser actor to start playing to the patron in the back row. It speaks volumes about the destructive nature of taking action without knowing, and just how easy it is to ruin a person with mere whispers.
There is one stretch of DOUBT that will pin you to your seat, and it is a twenty-something minute stretch encompassing two scenes in the third act. The first scene is where Streep and Davis meet and discuss the problem surrounding the boy in question. Davis is brilliant in this, her only bit of screen time. The conversation which begins in the principal’s office, and continues as a walk through the neighbourhood is riddled with moments where Davis swallows hard to contain her tone. All at once she is afraid, angry, and uncertain – but she desperately wants to keep those emotions out of the sight of Sister Aloysius. Not to be undone, Streep delivers every line back to Davis in a manner that might as well have her starting each sentence with “No – you aren’t listening to me.”
Following that sensational display, Seymour-Hoffman barges into Streep’s office to have it out once and for all. He has finally lost his patience, having already discussed the matter once with Streep and Adams, and is furious that the situation has gone this far. What ensues is a venomous argument between the two that plays like a conversational knife fight. For some it may be hard to believe that priests and nuns would ever speak to each other in this manner (they have – trust me), so seeing these two characters go at it in this manner makes for riveting film making.
The movie is directed by John Patrick Shanley, who likewise directed the award-winning play on which the movie is based. There’s a jarring transition here or there, a line or two that could have been cut, and a few obvious metaphors, but they are minor flaws. The movie is a supreme achievement for the man who hasn’t been behind the camera since JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO, and he deserves high praise for getting such performances out of these talented actors.
As Father Flynn puts it “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.” It’s amazing how driven we can become when we have questions in our heart, and the actions we take because of them. It is indeed as though we were acting on truth, when quite often we are only acting on suspicion. Appropriately enough, the only way to fight off doubt, is to hold fast to faith. Perhaps if people had more faith in each other, such doubts wouldn’t bring so many things toppling to the ground so quickly.
Movie looks alittle weird from the trailers, but Its been getting alot of nominations so I might have to check it out.