DOUBT
Written & Directed by John Patrick Shanley, based on his play
Produced by Scott Rudin & Mark Roybal
Released by Miramax Films
USA. 104 min. Rated PG-13
With Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis & Joseph Foster II
 

The first sight of Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius will flash the viewer back to another authoritarian figure, Star Wars’ Darth Vader, as a tall figure, shrouded in black, rises from a church pew, back to the camera. But the effect of her appearance becomes more comical than threatening. Squirming boys suddenly sit upright at the sight of her, and a whack to the back of the head ceases any whispering.

However, the tone more and more mirrors the overcast skies and metaphoric stormy weather. At a parochial school in the Bronx, 1964,  a gullible, self-effacing Sister James (wide-eyed Amy Adams as the least worldly nun imaginable) comes to her superior with her suspicion of a priest’s untoward behavior with one of her students. Sister Aloysius pounces. (She already bristles at his sermons.) Forget due process. As the principal of the parochial school, she will use her own system of intimidation and threats to remove Father Flynn, foregoing the male-dominated channels of authority, armed with her firm judgment and no hard evidence.

Streep signals loud and clear Sister Aloysius’s displeasure whether through a grimace or the narrowing of her eyes in a performance that would read loud and clear even up in the cheap seats of a cavernous Broadway theater. (It inevitably evokes her imperious turn in The Devil Wears Prada when she barks, “Don’t make me wait.”) Yet the original 2004 stage production was not only more understated, but lived up to its title. The high-pitched battle between the old-school principal and the reform-minded priest was a draw, both drawing blood. The name of the game, uncertainty, reigned. John Patrick Shanley’s play would seem ideally suited for the scrutiny of a camera. But if anything, the film feels less nuanced, bulldozed by Streep’s take-no-prisoner performance.

As Sister Aloysius methodically builds her case, Father Flynn rebuts her point by point, and as the man in question, Philip Seymour Hoffman matches Streep decibel for decibel. The fallout from the recent child sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church will beef up Sister Aloysius’s cause for many in the audience. But Shanley also references the hysteria (inadvertently through Streep’s performance) of the early 1980s, infamously represented by the 1987-’90 McMartin Preschool abuse trial in Southern California (where no convictions were made and all charges against the defendants were eventually dropped). Ultimately, Streep deflates any ambiguity through her attempt to either humanize or add color to her staunchly rigid interrogator, which decidedly tips the scale. There’s a sense of resolution, due more to her acting choices than Shanley’s dialogue. Kent Turner
December 12, 2008