Doubt

Genre: psychological drama 

With: Meryl Streep (Sister Aloysius Beauvier), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Father Brendan Flynn), Amy Adams (Sister James), Joseph Foster II (Donald Miller), Viola Davis (Mrs. Miller, Donald’s mother), Lloyd Clay Brown (Jimmy Hurley), Bridget Megan Clark (Noreen Horan)

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Release: 2008

Studio: Miramax Films, Scott Rudin Productions

Rating: PG-13

MBiS score: 7.7/10

Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t

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Story-line: the Bronx, 1964. Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the stern principal at St. Nicholas, suspects that something improper is going on in her school and that Father Flynn, the local parish priest, is somehow involved.   

Pluses: a remarkable performance by Meryl Streep as the unlikeable but gutsy Aloysius, fine acting by Philip Seymour Hoffman, attractive cinematography, a screenplay that cultivates ambiguity and delivers an intriguing climax.

Minuses: a slow first act (although necessary to lay down the issues), inconsistencies in Sister James’s mindset, one unconvincing scene about priestly life (do men of the cloth really get together to smoke, drink and make fun of people?), disruptive interventions by minor characters, overstatements in the dialogues.      

Comments: DOUBT, a film about morals and judgment calls, is marred by several defects but makes up for most of them in the final act with two intense discussions that shed light on earlier events. I’ve read somewhere that we humans cannot bear living in doubt because we naturally crave certainty… and that’s very true when you consider Sister Beauvier’s anguish in the closing scene. Food for thought and food for the soul.

MBiS

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