Doubt

One of the things that movies can do is to bring the stage to us provincials, living away from the centers of theater, and bring those plays to us with first-rate casts. Doubt is one of those cases. It is a fine play by the writer and director of the film, John Patrick Shanley; it is a play that will eventually come to college campuses and local theaters, but not for a while. In the meantime we’ll just have to settle for a film with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the lead roles. Critics will often complain that a play is too stagebound to become a good movie, and that movies’ attempts to “open up” plays are usually unsuccessful. But I can certainly handle a few scenes shot in alternate locales to get to see this play peformed by this cast.

Doubt touches upon a panoply of modern issues—racism, homosexuality, and sexual abuse of children by priests. If Meryl Streep’s character had revealed that she’s had an abortion in her youth, we’d have covered the entire waterfront. Most importantly, the play deals with the question of certainty and doubt, and how we calibrate our existence so that we have enough certainty to act when needed but enough doubt to act circumspectly. Hoffman’s character, Father Flynn, delivers a simple but moving homily to his congregation about the isolating quality of doubt, how we each must deal with it alone. (Hoffman shines in the three opportunities he has to deliver homilies in the film.) Later, after she has accused Father Flynn of child sexual abuse for which she has almost no evidence, Sister Aloysius declares that she has her certainty and concedes that there is nothing the Father could do or say that could sway her from it. In the last scene Sister Aloysius quite unexpectedly breaks down into tears to Sister James and confesses that she too is wracked by doubt regarding her charges against Father Flynn, which by then have caused him to resign his post. (I have some problems with this last turn of events because it seems to come from nowhere; to that point we have seen no chinks in her armor of certitude.)

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of doubt in the film is the doubt that the audience is left with. We certainly want to believe Father Flynn; he is presented to us in an entirely sympathetic manner. We don’t want to participate in Sister Aloysius’s certainty because she runs her school, as Sister James notes, like a prison, and much of her suspicion of Father Flynn stems from her personal distaste for him. She is clearly portrayed as a reactionary force (she won’t let students use ball point pens) fighting desperately against the open-minded liberal spirit represented by Father Flynn. And yet, much as we may be appalled by her motives and her methods, Sister Aloysius may be correct about Father Flynn; he does, after all, resign his position rather than have her pursue an investigation of his past. We are left hanging in a very precarious position of uncertainty.

One aspect of doubt that, somewhat surprisingly, never really enters the film is doubt in the tenets of religious faith. None of these characters troubled by doubt about truth as it is revealed through Mother Church.

A couple of words about performances. Meryl Streep totally transforms herself into the insufferable Sister Aloysius; it’s a relief to see her as herself in the DVD featurettes. Phillip Seymour Hoffman shows a number of sides to his character—the buddy-style mentor of schools’ boys, the political operator, the assertive administrator, the angry man, etc. It is a rich role and he carries it off well in all its aspects. Amy Adams plays Sister James as an innocent who has the strength to stand up to Sister Aloyisius; it’s a diffcult balance, but she manages it impressively. And the brief time that Viola Davis is on screen as the mother of the African American boy Father Flynn has supposedly molested is the most moving of the film; the range of emotions she covers—anger, fear, outrage, frustration, despair—is remarkable, all while maintaining the dignity of her character.

The script is a little heavy on symbolism—Sister Aloysius caught outside in a storm, windows that keep being left open, light bulbs that go out at significant moments. But overall Doubt is a great evening of substantial theater that you can enjoy at home. Let there be no doubt about that.