A&E Review: 'Doubt'
February 4, 2009
By Christopher Ray
A&E Writer
9 out of 10 – As good as it gets. See it in the theaters while you still can.
“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.” - Father Flynn
John Patrick Shanley penned the play “Doubt” in 2004, and wrote and directed it for the screen in 2008 starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Set in a 1960's Catholic church, it pits a progressive priest against a traditional nun. Sister Aloysius (Streep) knows the world around her is menacing, and is only looking for the signs to prove it. Sometimes to fix wrongdoings we must step away from God, but in his service. This is her justification for pursuing her convictions against Father Flynn, who is suspected of coming on to the only black child at the school, while he simply claims to be taking the child in under his wing due to his vulnerability.
Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams star in Doubt, now in theaters. |
The drama that plays out will have you leaning both ways before the ordeal is finished, but yet that is the film's strongest point. If you go into Doubt expecting a clear cut answer at the end, you need only refer back to the title. Faith is belief without evidence, and is uncheckable in the world of evidence and reason. This film is a parable (the original play had “a parable” as a subtitle) of biblical proportions. How sure can you be without evidence? How far will we go to pursue our strongest convictions that have no backing beyond circumstantial evidence? Rarely in life do we truly get a trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty chance to prove anything.
Meryl Streep's character is a treat, and is very complex. She speaks with subtle disdain towards the hierarchy of the church, and one must constantly consider her motivations in her pursuit of truth. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Father Flynn will make you come uncomfortably close to considering mercy towards atrocious actions, yet only to continually test you in your convictions of what he actually did. There is a simple and beautiful scene where he and a group of boys are setting at a table drinking Mt. Dew and it is very nonthreatening and natural, and he explains to them how they have the right to ask a girl to dance with them, and the girl has the right to turn them down. This practical social lesson between a priest and children is, in itself, quite charming, yet it is one of the many scenes that forces you to chose which point of view you wish to view this world through. There is a younger more naive sister played by Amy Adams who gets stuck in between these two powerful personalities, giving us the prism of simplicity and “the benefit of the doubt” (no pun intended). We must pick the prism through which we view life, and the two nuns provide the polar extremes quite well.
The ending of the film is a treat, and managed to provoke the response of putting an ear to ear grin on my face while my eyes teared up, a first and quite fascinating experience for me at a film. This film is put together almost perfectly for the plot, and it reminds us of how much certainty we create for ourselves in a very uncertain world.
