Movie Review: Doubt

Doubt is written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, based on his 2005 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play. The last film he directed was the underrated Joe Versus the Volcano, which he also wrote.

The story is set in a Catholic grade school in the Bronx. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the strict principal and Sister James (Amy Adams) is a young naive history teacher. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the recently transfered progressive priest. Also new to the school is Donald Miller, the first black student in the school and serving as an alter boy. Sister James reports an unusual private meeting between the Father and Donald to Sister Aloysius and she begins a witch hunt to find out if Father Flynn is abusing the boy. She doesn't have evidence but she has her certainty.

I thought I knew where it was going, but the film took a couple of surprising turns that added more ambiguity to the moral. One of those turns involved a conversation between Sister Aloysius and Donald's mother (Viola Davis). Davis got an Oscar nomination out of a single scene with Meryl Streep and it was very well deserved. In fact, all four major characters (and the only characters in the original play) received Oscar nominations.

Good story that leaves you thinking. Based on the title you shouldn't be surprised to have some questions at the end of the film. I liked it a lot based on the strength of the story and the acting. As a film adaptation there were too many thunder storms and dramatically exploding light bulbs acting as obvious metaphors. There were also too many inexplicable Batman camera angles. I was waiting for a Pow! and a Zowie! This felt like a play brought to the screen unlike Frost/Nixon which felt like a film. But not having seen the play, I was very happy to get this story via the screen.

This is the kind of film you want to talk about after seeing, so I'll continue below after a spoilers warning:

*Spoilers*

I think the film left little doubt that he did it. The undershirt, his response to Sister Aloysius' lie about contacting the nun at his previous parish, his history of transfers, and his constant evasion of questions about what happened. That's not a lot of evidence but his explanations were pretty weak. What really convinced me was the other boy who flinched whenever Father Flynn's hand was near, and he didn't seem like the hitting type. Donnie may have been willing but that doesn't make it any less wrong.

Now, my views and the rationale I gave are not enough to convict him of a crime. Well maybe they would be enough to convince a jury, but they shouldn't be. I also don't think they are enough to get him to lose his job. They are enough to begin an investigation, and yes Father Flynn might reasonably request a transfer to avoid the suspicions and the gossip that would result from that.

I think the real doubt of the title is what Sister Aloysius expresses at the end. I think it's doubt in her faith as she's clutching her cross and lamenting that the male controlled church saw fit to give this man a promotion. There must be something wrong for that to happen. She's clearly old school in her social views how children should be taught and what's best for them. If ballpoint pens, sugar and Frosty the Snowman can be the source of moral failings, shouldn't child molestation be too? The opening sermon was about doubt, in particular doubt when you're alone, without the comfort of a group. Sister Aloysius feels that way, since everyone else seems to be ok with the secularization of the world.

I think a lot of people will view Sister Aloysius. solely as the mean authoritarian nun and these people will be confused by the last line coming out of nowhere. But that's forgetting a lot of small things about Sister Aloysius that we learn. She wants to bend the rules to help her fellow nun who is going blind. She loves listening to the transistor radio. She was married. She committed a mortal sin. While there isn't much to go on, there are hints to more depth of her character and we should have doubts about what we think of her.

I found the last scene odd. Sister Aloysius is breaking down and Sister James tries to comfort her; but it's Sister James who puts her head in Sister Aloysius' lap. That seems reversed to me. Sister Aloysius was her superior, so in that sense it's right, but I think I'm missing something.

Was there any real reason to make the boy the first african-american in the school? Yes there's an alternate reason for fights, but do you really need one for kids? Mrs. Miller really wanted him to do well to get into a better high school and then college. That's more a challenging dream for a black family in 1964 but it could be any mother's dream. Is that the point?

The nuns and priests were less religious than I would have thought. We rarely saw them praying. When Sister James mentions her brother is sick, Father Flynn expresses compassion but doesn't say he'll pray for him. Sister Aloysius doesn't even care which Pope is on the wall.