What’s this? Two days in a row where I have a review for a Meryl Streep movie? How the heck did that happen? You know, besides the obvious reason that I watched two movies in a row that I had never seen before that both had Meryl Streep in them. She’s a talented and versatile actress, and she gets around.
Anyway, this is my review for the 2008 film adaptation of the stage play Doubt with Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, so if nothing else, this will have some great acting chops on display.
Set around a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, the movie is basically a clash between the popular, forward-thinking Father Flynn and the traditional, conservative school principal Sister Aloysius (Streep). We see almost immediately the difference between the two in the opening scene, set at a Sunday mass. Father Flynn’s sermon is about doubt, how many people feel it, that it is perfectly normal to doubt God’s existence, and that his parishioners should find strength in the knowledge that they are not alone in their doubt. He’s friendly and affable, getting along well with the altar boys before and after Mass, particularly the school’s lone African American student, a boy named Donald Miller (Joseph Foster). By contrast, Sister Aloysius is correcting student behavior even during the weekend, causing looks of fear in her youthful charges as she simply walks down an aisle during the sermon. When she mutters a question to herself over what Flynn means by his sermon, the stage (so to speak) is set. His ways just bother her, and when young nun Sister James (Adams) brings a report to Sister Aloysius about some odd behavior Donald exhibited after being unexpectedly called to see Father Flynn and then return to class, that’s all Sister Aloysius needs to launch a personal campaign to get Flynn out of her school.
In many ways, the movie is set up as a clash between tradition and progress. Father Flynn sees no harm in using a secular song for the Christmas pageant, but sister Aloysius immediately shoots down “Frosty the Snowman” for its pagan origins. The nuns eat at a quiet table with a lot of deference to Sister Aloysius. The priests, with notably less participants, are spread out, laughing and cracking jokes. There’s still a hierarchy involved in the Church, and Flynn does take advantage of it from time to time in ways the obviously rankle Sister Aloysius, but the question of the movie is not so much did Father Flynn engage in inappropriate behavior with Donald Miller as it is how far will Sister Aloysius go to get rid of the man she clearly didn’t like much to begin with?
To that end, the movie never exactly says whether or not Father Flynn did what Sister Aloysius largely alludes to. His explanations for what happened, drawn out as they are, are largely reasonable. What he says happened could very well have been what happened, and they’re even enough to satisfy Sister James. At the same time, it is still possible he did do what Sister Aloysius accuses him of, and she is relentless to prove it. Does she want to point out a major wrongdoing, or does she want to simply get rid of the priest she disagrees with on an ideological basis? Either is possible. The one thing that is certain is at no time during Streep’s on-screen clashes with Hoffman does she display the slightest bit of uncertainty, and given the acting abilities of both Streep and Hoffman, those scenes really stand out. They made the movie what it was, underlining the stage play origins, but still displaying a lot of cinematic power.
Writer/director John Patrick Shanley adapted his own play for this movie, and he has a good eye for cinema. Sometimes a movie written by a playwright can still come across as a stageplay. That didn’t seem to be the case here. Shanley’s camera move, showing the right angles, knowing when to pull in for a close-up and when not to, and this is very much the sort of movie that more or less requires a lot of close-ups. That wouldn’t have worked on the stage, obviously, but getting in close to show Streep’s conviction and Hoffman’s hesitancy makes the movie what it is. That the movie ends with the lines that it does keeps the real reason for Sister Aloysius’s actions a bit more questionable, but also added a lovely wrinkle to the story. As someone who attended 12 years of Catholic school himself, I don’t know that I ever had a Sister Aloysius or a Father Flynn during the course of my education, but I can say that it did seem as if the Flynns of the world won out against the Aloysiuses. And maybe, just maybe, doubt is just another way of asking if you’re on the right side of history and not liking the answer you may be giving yourself.
Grade: A-
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