new release – ¦ ¦- DOUBT – ¦ ¦- 5/10
St Augustine in the 5th Century was right when he said that "Hope has two lovely daughters, anger and courage: anger so that what cannot be, may not be; and courage, so that what must be, will be."
Fr Richard Leonard SJ
Guy : That's showbiz.
Roman : That's exactly what it is. All the costumes, rituals – all religions.
Minnie : We're offending Rosemary.
Rosemary : No, no.
Roman : Are you religious, my dear?
Rosemary : I was brought up a Catholic.
Roman : You looked uncomfortable.
Rosemary : He is the Pope.
Roman : You don't have to respect him because he pretends he's holy.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
As with Meryl Streep's other big film of 2008, Mamma Mia!, directorial inexperience fatally undermines Doubt: Phyllida Lloyd had never been in charge of a movie before the Abba spectacular; John Patrick Shanley's sole previous stint in the director's chair was back in 1990 for Joe Versus the Volcano in 1990. He's adapted his own Pulitzer-winning play here, but the results prove, not for the first time, that writing for the theatre, writing for the movies, and directing a film are entirely different disciplines.
A sombre-looking, classily-appointed tale of religion, race, sexuality and politics set in the febrile USA of 1964, it revolves around the "inappropriate relationship" which may or may not have developed between Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and one of his altar-boys, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), who happens to be his (religious) school's first black pupil.
Suspicions are raised by a sweet, innocent young nun, Sister James (Amy Adams), who spots the lad acting strangely in her class and takes her concerns to her superior, Sister Aloysius (Streep). The latter, an old-school disciplinarian who disapproves of Father Flynn's "progressive" ideas and has long suspected him of sexual deviancy, becomes quickly convinced of his guilt – and of the need to remove him from his position of power.
The film then becomes a power-struggle between Flynn and Aloysius, played out over a handful of talky, emotionally-charged scenes that seem more a matter of giving two heavyweight actors the chance to lock horns than to intelligently explore the hot-button issues which Shanley has chosen to dramatise – and which he lays out, very baldly, for our inspection, both in the dialogue (the first word of which is "doubt", the last is "doubts") and via metaphor (the cat brought into the convent to catch a troublesome mouse, etc etc.)
The picture has reportedly lost some ambiguity on its transition from page to screen, and this seems a fundamental error: this story only really functions if we (a) don't know if Flynn is guilty of sexual transgression or not; and (b) we sympathise equally with both Flynn and Aloysius. As it is, Shanley can't resist rigging the deck at nearly every juncture, and it doesn't help that he struggles to maintain control of the picture's tone. The talkier scenes barrel along with the jangly alacrity of near-screwball farce, other sequences channel the doomy ominousness of those horror and suspense pictures set within the walls of religious institutions: tilted ('Dutch') angles abound, and it's notable how many scenes play out to the pathetically-fallacious accompaniment of extreme winter weather.
Not that Doubt fares much better when venturing beyond the school/convent/church walls: the most notable exterior scene sees Sister Aloysius discussing her concerns with Donald's mother (Viola Davis), whose reactions strain and then exceed the bounds of credibility. This is a considerable problem, coming at such a crucial moment in a picture which has already walked a fine line between dramatic license and opportunistic scriptwriting contrivance.
Typical of Shanley's counterproductive, over-the-top approach is the way Davis, liquid snot dribbling from nose to mouth, is allowed to veer so deeply into Method-Acting territory. That said, she generally fares pretty well with what is, as written, a nightmarishly difficult role to pull off (Adams likewise makes the best of a bad job as Sister James, a wide-eyed boob who also must function as the audience's surrogate.) If Doubt remains watchable and moderately engaging, that's partly due to the expert off-camera contributions from editor Dylan Tichenor and cinematographer Roger Deakins, working together for the second time – the first being 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Doubt is, like Andrew Dominik's neo-western, notably convincing in its period detailing and atmosphere, although viewers versed in religious matters will find themselves snagging on numerous flubs of minor and major consequence ("Stoles were not worn on the outside of a chasuble at this time, and Father's very modern Lenten vestments, while possible at this time, peg him as a very trendy member of the French liturgical movement" – Fr Richard Leonard SJ). Believers, heretics and heathens alike, meanwhile, will surely rapidly tire of Howard Shore's portentous holy racket of a score, which wastes no opportunity to underline the importance of every key development.
As with Mamma Mia!, however, this – is very much The Meryl Streep Show. She pushes Aloysius – who, we soon realise is, beneath her vestments and harsh exterior, an unusually earthy, direct and multi-layered individual – just to the verge of Sister Act religious-camp caricature, and lets us know that she (Streep) is fully in on the joke without ever actually undermining the material. As with the Abba musical, Streep communicates an unspoken awareness that she's stuck with pretty second-rate stuff – albeit here dressed up to look like a high-toned, prestigious work of capital-A Art – and that the best way to proceed is to have as much (straight-faced) fun as possible.
Neil Young, 1st March, 2009
DOUBT : [5/10] : USA 2008 : John Patrick SHANLEY : 104m (BBFC) : seen 22.Feb.09, Empire cinema, Sunderland ( £5.80)
director : John Patrick Shanley
country : USA
year : 2008
run-time : 104m (BBFC)
seen : 22nd February, 2009
cinema : Empire, Sunderland, UK
format : 35mm
paid : £5.80
MVP : Meryl Streep
respected second opinion : Fr Richard Leonard SJ, The Catholic Church in Australia