Doubt
2008
Starring: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Joseph Foster
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Runtime: 105 Minutes
Distributor: Mirimax
Rating: Pg-13
As a stage production this intelligent, studied tale of suspicion and, well, doubt, in an early 1960’s catholic school ran to great acclaim, scooping multiple awards including a Tony for its creator John Patrick Shanley. This screen adaptation both scripted and directed by Shanley is perhaps unsurprisingly light on cinematic verve, but is carried over by some powerhouse performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep.
What immediately strikes you with Doubt is its stark simplicity. The issue of a potentially inappropriate relationship between a priest and an alter boy is raised and a simple question asked – did he or didn’t he? From there a whole world is torn apart and an entire institution is thoroughly examined with both its values questioned and its continued struggle for relevance put to the test.
Shanley fastidiously forges Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius as two sides of the same coin. As the Father holds ceremony over the congregation at mass, delivering a sermon about the nature of doubt, Sister Aloysius walks amongst the pews, straightening backs and slapping chattering children upside the head. They are at once wisdom and temperance, virtue and discipline.
Shanley’s Doubt is all about contrasts. It’s the study of a unity of opposites, how they function, and a study of harmony sought and serenity disrupted. Serving as school principal to the children and spiritual leader for the sisterhood, Streep cuts a joyless figure of diligent devotion to duty and a fierce guardian of traditionalism. Spending her days roaming the classroom chastising young girls for provocative hairclips, confiscating transistor radios and cursing the day the school introduced ballpoint pens, which “ruin penmanship.” Terrifying the other nuns equally, if not more than the children, she peers over her reading glasses out from under a black cowl at the head of the table as the sisterhood quietly digests a meager meal in silence each night.
By contrast Hoffman’s Flynn is both warm and affable. He’s welcoming to the children, the boys in particular, more concerned with winning their trust than doling out discipline. He enjoys life (perhaps too much?), sending the bishop and the elderly, inebriated monsignor into fits with a funny story over after dinner brandy and cigars.
Caught between these two clashing titans of authority is the mutely timid Sister James (Amy Adams in a performance that will surely take her career to the next level). She is a reservedly determined young teacher of history brave enough to suspect Father Flynn, but too terrified to believe him capable of harm.
While the plot is essentially contained within this triangle, Shanley sets it against an era of great upheaval, the middle sixties, where an entire nation is transforming and the church itself is struggling to keep up. In an institution where women follow obediently, behind the scenes tiny battles are fought between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius as to the song list for the upcoming pageant – subtle assertions of authority, subtle rejections of authority, the position one occupies at a table, it’s all deliberate and it all matters.
Donald, the alter boy at the center of the controversy, being the first Negro the school has accepted, gives Father Flynn reason to guard him closely while at the same time places the boy in a vulnerable, isolated position. Clearly Shanley perceives the Catholic Church as a bit of a boys club where the men, who hold all the power, stick together as a matter of principle, whether there is anything to hide or not.
As with all plays the emphasis is on dialogue, strong posture and symbolism. Where someone stands in a room says as much about them as any words they utter. Sister Aloysius is forever bemoaning open windows where leaves blow in as if she is trying to keep the very world at bay. Shanley often tracks the looming arched hallways from very low to the ground, tilting the camera upwards with reverence at the arched ceilings like the eyes of a frightened child.
But it’s the nuances delivered by both Hoffman and Streep that lend such layers to the feud and make the tension between them positively palpable. Sister Aloysius is devout, but as Sister James duly points out to her, she clearly dislikes Father Flynn from the offset: “You don’t like him because he takes three sugars in his tea, and because he likes Frosty the Snowman” (whom Sister Aloysius deems Pagan). Is she merely resentful that men of lesser faith and commitment get to rise within an organization she has devoted her life to based solely on their gender?
Hoffman has the much harder task and delivers a tightrope performance, simultaneously retaining enough of our sympathies to be likable yet opening himself to enough of our suspicions to leave us uncertain. There is something definitely off about Father Flynn, his flubbing of simple details and the way he has trouble maintaining eye contact. Yet his explanations for certain incidents at the heart of the matter are certainly in the realm of the plausible, if slightly strange.
It’s a commendable effort from Shanley, whose only other effort behind the camera was Tom Hanks’ oddball comedy Joe Verses the Volcano. Wisely limiting the action almost entirely to inside the school building, he immerses us in this world of ritual and tradition. While he is content to retreat to a respectful distance and let his capable performers do their work, Shanley knows just exactly what to accentuate with the camera and how best to place us within a scene so that we hear all sides equally. The final quiet exchange between the Sisters in the garden gently erupts into a curtain dropper (so to speak) that’s deeply unexpected, quietly affecting, and wholly appropriate.
Leave a Reply