We first attempted to see Doubt two weeks ago, but were shocked by the ticket-seller’s news that it was sold out. Not so shocking, perhaps – it was showing in one of the smaller theaters. Our next attempt was last Friday, and was successful – and the theater was, indeed full.
I had very much wanted to see the play – the touring production with Cherry Jones came to Chicago at some point, and I briefly entertained the fantasy that trucking over there to see it was actually a possibility. A fantasy, as I said. But despite my interest in the play, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the film, mainly because the previews seemed to indicate that the movie would basically be about Meryl Streep in a bonnet, screeching.
I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a good film – flawed, but good.
More discussion after the jump.
The story is set in a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, run by the Sisters of Charity. The principal, Sister Aloysius, played by Meryl Streep is super-strict and no-nonsense – although it is clear that her motives are rooted in concern for the children in her care. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the associate pastor, Father Flynn, who preaches about subjects like doubt. This raises Mother’s suspicions as she reflects on the content of the homily, wondering if the priest is preaching to himself. She tells her sisters to be on the alert.
One young sister, Sister James, played by Amy Adams, takes Mother at her word and starts noticing things – the relationship of Father Flynn with one boy, in particular, a new boy and the first and only black boy in the school. Father Flinn calls the boy out of class to the rectory, the boy returns, upset, and smells of alcohol. She sees the priest putting the boy’s undershirt back in his gym locker.
She shares her observations with Mother, who immediately jumps on the case – I won’t go into details about what follows, but let us just say that Shanley the writer gets the dynamic of this kind of situation just right. It is, as someone said, just like opening up one of those case files.
Mother is certain – she has no doubt. On what is her certainty based? A few clues here and there, her past experience.
The priest, who preaches the reality and binding force of doubt, assuring those who listen that if they doubt, they are not alone, says vague things about a new spirit, a new way of being church that is not as strict as that which is embodied in the school. He absolutely denies that he has done anything wrong – without explicitly denying it, and the language he uses to explain his behavior – whatever it was – in his story, it was simply assisting a boy in a difficult situation – is either warmly reassuring or chilling, depending on how you have heard those words used before in your life.
The point of the piece is not the particulars of Catholicism or hierarchy or even sexual abuse, but the nature of faith and doubt. Shanley maintains this, but I suspect it might be easier to do so in relation to the play. Film does something else to material and makes it more difficult to get through the particulars on your way to a broader point.
Things I liked:
The atmosphere and landscape of the time was exceedly well done – and accurate, according to people I’ve spoken to who were in those parts, doing the Catholic thing at the time.
The performances. Streep is not my favorite, and she creeps close to the edge of acting at times, as does Hoffman, especially when he is put on the defense, but those are minor points. Amy Adams was good, but I am finding her performances are mostly variations on winsome. Given her appearance and voice it is hard to overcome, I suppose.
Although Shanley says it is not the real point, everything about the dynamic of this situations was dead on (even if Flynn was not guilty – the situation was constructed to make you think he could have been, so the markers are there) : the ambiguities, the clues to wrongdoing, the all-too-typical of a victim, the arguments the perpetrator makes in his own defense, the playing of both the liberality and clerical card, at the same time, by the same person, in the same conversation.
The tension between the lives of the sisters and the lives of the priests. It was like a J.F. Powers story come to life.
Things that made me go eh:
This is a faint, faint quibble. The piece is set in 1964, and there are allusions to winds of change, but they are not specific enough. I know the point is not the place and time, but if you’re going to bother to set something in a particular moment – allusions are made to Kennedy’s assassination the year before – you might as well take a few more baby steps forward. In 1964, the Council was in full swing, and conversations about doing things in a new way would not have been vague – they would have happened in awareness of the possibilities for the Council.
There are a few liturgical nits to pick – the priest’s breviary, for example, was in English only, when it would have been Latin-English, if that. There were a few other things, not worth mentioning, probably.
The biggest problem with the film, as others have noted, was the direction, by playwright Shanley. Most of the time it was serviceable, but there were moments in which it approached awful – for example when we lept into some magical realism during the gossip homily and saw the old woman staring in horror at all the loose feathers. An image which was supposed to, I assume refer to the frequent images of storm winds and gusting leaves, which were overdone and obvious. That didn’t work out too well. Winds of change? We got it. The close, tilted shots were pretty lame, too.
A.O. Scott has declared the film to be closed and political “melodrama of received thinking…religious authority is bad” – I don’t agree at all. It wasn’t making any points about the Catholic Church that weren’t based in the reality we all know too well. Sister Aloysius is strict, but it’s clear that her eagle-eye is out surveying the land for the sake of her charges and that she is acting out of an acquaintance with the real world, since she had been married before she entered the convent. Although I didn’t feel any doubt (more below) on the truth, I also didn’t feel it was inexorably driving in that direction, nor was it sympathetic to Flynn’s perspective, since the possibility that his perspective was simply a cover for his crimes is evidenced by his ease in the bloody-roast rectory eating scene, his sexism on evidence there, and his rapid retreat to clericalism in his own defense. I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Perhaps some of you agree.
And now for the question we’re not supposed to be concerned with, but can’t avoid. Did he do it?
I think so, and I think we’re supposed to think so – I don’t know how else to interpret some of the visual cues in the film such as the blonde boy’s slight smile at the very end, during the priest’s final farewell homily. I don’t think the evidence that Mother presented was imaginary or a stretch. And for me, as I indicated above, the greatest indicator of guilt was Flinn’s question – haven’t you ever done anything wrong – as well as his obfuscating language about love and compassion.
Finally – what’s your intepretation of Mother’s final outburst? What are her doubts about? His guilt, or the whole structure and meaning of a Church that promotes such a man instead of pursuing a serious investigation of his possible crimes and sins?
Update before I’ve even published the post
Well, I just wasted an hour because the Rightwing Film Geek said it all, and so much better than I, because the man actually knows how to write about film, which I don’t.
Here’s the point I would make if I could put thoughts together in a coherent way:
But if, as I argue, the movie only makes logical sense if Hoffman actually did take liberties with Donald (and it’s important to note — he really did or he really didn’t. Regardless of the epistemological obstacles, there is a “fact of the matter”), then it’s the very opposite of the jejune overdone theme of “religious authority is bad.”
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