Essential: DOUBT (2008)

TopBilled:

The opening shots show us cars and fashions of the early 1960s with dialogue mentioning JFK’s recent death, so that make no mistake, we know when this story is supposed to take place. Also, the first sermon we hear is on the topic of doubt, which gives us the main theme right upfront.

Later we see Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), the only black altar boy of St. Nicholas parish and school, telling Fr. Brendan Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) he wants to be a priest. I remember serving as an altar boy with friends of mine in my youth and none of us ever said this. The last thing we wanted to become was a priest. We were too busy being kids.

There’s an initial classroom scene where Sister James (Amy Adams) informs her pupils the only thing they have to fear is fear itself, etc. Another obvious nod to the film’s main theme….causing me to ponder, what are these characters going to doubt and be fearful about?

The principal at St. Nicholas is Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep). She presides over the goings-on in a most brittle-like fashion. Streep is borderline camp with this put-on accent she’s affecting and the way she clutches her cross– making sure we know she’s an east coaster as well as a genteel holy monster.

I do like the contrast between her and Hoffman, which is glimpsed almost immediately when we see how they eat. On one hand there is the austerity of the nuns’ dinner table, and on the other hand, there’s the joviality of the priest’s dinner table.

Everyone’s uniformly terrified of Sister Aloysius. But these same everyones like Sister James, even if she is not exactly a proficient educator. About 25 minutes into the film, Sister James develops suspicions about Fr. Flynn and Donald, which “endears” her to Aloysius. This I found a bit over the top and unintentionally humorous.

It sets up a strange meeting between the two women and Flynn in the principal’s office. There are little bits of business done to reveal these characters in ways that are hardly subtle– his wanting sugar (to show us he enjoys earthly pleasures), his sitting in the chair that Aloysius normally assumes (to show us who’s boss), his wanting a secular song included as part of the upcoming Christmas pageant (to show us he’s not entirely into sacred religious music), and so forth.

Eventually the nuns stop beating around the bush and they tell the priest their concerns about his interactions with Donald. Sister James reveals she smelled alcohol on Donald’s breath after a recent visit to speak with Flynn at the rectory. Flynn has a plausible answer, saying the boy was caught sneaking wine by the caretaker and he was counseling the boy. But Aloysius isn’t believing any of it.

As a parable and work of fiction, DOUBT is an interesting way to examine character and conflict within Catholicism. But it does not seem realistic to me. The sisters would not call Donald’s mother (Viola Davis) without verifying the priest’s account with the caretaker, or without first speaking to the monsignor. Also, the priest would not “retaliate” by making a pointed sermon on gossip the following Sunday.

Furthermore, there is artificial suspense about whether or not he is actually guilty. Despite the fact that he likes to touch the boys and he suggested taking the boys on a camping trip. It’s an allegory, pre-Vatican II, about church sex abuse, produced in 2007-2008, when recent cases were in the news.

The most objectionable part involves the mother’s visit to the school, which opens up a dramatic can of worms. This is not your ordinary parent-teacher conference. At first Mrs. Miller seems clueless about why Sister Aloysius has invited her to the school to speak about Donald. But then we find out she knows more than she has let others believe.

During a long walk she describes her son’s nature to Sister Aloysius, implying the 12 year old kid is gay. She indicates that her husband beats Donald because of this. Then, as if that were not enough, she suggests she is willing to sacrifice Donald to a priest accused of pedophilia if it gets her boy ahead in life. After all, the man is willing to show love to her boy, which is something her abusive husband won’t do. Really?

This leads to a huge confrontation back in the principal’s office between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn. Aloysius expresses her certainty of Flynn’s guilt and her fundamental distrust of him. She tells a whopper of a story to test whether or not he’s the type of man who should remain in charge at St. Nicholas. She is waiting for his confession, and so are we. Ultimately, he resigns from his job (and gets a promotion to another parish!) which Sister Aloysius later relays to Sister James.

John Patrick Shanley’s morality tale hinges on one universal truth: if you do not become a confessor, then you will be a liar. Of that there is no doubt.

***

Jlewis:

DOUBT…can be a bond as powerful and sustainable as certainty.

So says a somewhat over confident in himself (at least among fellow men of the cloth) Father Brendan (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to his Bronx congregation of December 1964. This was a period when great changes were taking place with the Second Vatican Council cross-questioning centuries-old Catholic traditions in the ever-changing 20th century.

At first, we see Father Brendan as representing the “new” church of tomorrow while Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius, playing her role with an equal Saturnian consumption as her Miranda Priestly of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, is an upholder of old traditions. Both are at odds with each other and both fallible to their inner emotional turmoils.

John Patrick Shanley is the director and apparently the original source’s author as well. Scott Rudin is the indestructible big name producer and this film bears his successful high drama stamp. In addition to Streep and the late Hoffman, at least two other big TV and screen names get to shine here: Amy Adams as Sister James, in a role vaguely resembling Beau Bridge’s Paul in CHILD’S PLAY and equally caught up between two conflicting rivalries at war, and Viola Davis in a smaller stand-out role as the mommy of Joseph Foster’s Donald Miller, the first black student in St. Nicholas Catholic school.

The big battle boils down to Sister Aloysius plotting to bring Brendan down with suspicions of something “inappropriate” involving him and Donald. Idle gossip is the Devil’s workshop as they say. This Sister may or may not be committing the great sin of bearing false witness…and we are not sure until the final act.

We only know minor details of her own past, being married during the war in Europe, but are clueless as to why she makes such ready assumptions that Brendan is this certain “type” she knows about.

The speed with which he leaves the school and parish, but still succeeds with a promotion since the church is still dominated by men and not women in control, confirms any questions of “doubt” in her own mind even though she later confesses to Sister James in the end that she always has doubts in herself.  Read what we wish to read here: is she cut from the same cloth as Brendan and this is why she became a nun?

A rather depressing movie for me but also a very fascinating and well-put-together one, featuring plenty of clever visual gimmicks. For example, we get gusty wind and falling branches representing Sister Aloysius’ rage at times, adding a certain Gothic quality that reminds me a bit of CHILD’S PLAY.

Father Brendan comments in his final sermon on how “the wind” takes him to new destinies and he tries, unsuccessfully, to keep his conservative rival’s office window open to allow the wind in and she repeatedly shuts it. Also two references to a light bulb breaking when he and Sister James are in conflict with her. In a possible homage to the popular mini-series THE THORN BIRDS, Brendan has his own saved flowers in his bible, potentially suggesting certain past “loves” that may not have been physically expressed but emotionally felt.

I won’t beat around the bush here. Streep is wonderful and, easily, the most chameleon-like actress of her generation. Although all four stars were Oscar nominated here, she pretty much eats up the scenery with her role. Intriguingly, each stand-out performance by the other three involves arguing or debating with Streep, as if she is the primary creative influence on them.