Doubt (2008)

O Masterpiece
O Excellent
X Good
O OK
O Mediocrity
O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / January 16, 2009

Where I grew up our sixth grade classes went camping for a week. On one of the nights, we were divided into groups and encouraged to write skits; our only requirement was to design a tale that explained how the “mongoose” got its name.

I wrote my group’s script. Inevitably, since I had no idea what a mongoose was, our skit ended with a gaggle of baby geese following their mother, with one lagging behind, calling, “Mom-goose! Mom-goose!” … Exeunt. The end. I know, profoundly dumb, but I was in sixth grade.

“Doubt,” which is based on a stage play by John Patrick Shanley (who also wrote the screenplay and directed), more or less ends his motion picture like my sixth-grade play. Up to that point, it’s a wonderful film.

Set in December of 1964, “Doubt” magnifies the conflict between three people who have completely committed themselves to God, thereby embracing faith and typically eschewing doubt.

Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a disciplinarian nun who surely frightens even the devil. Philip Seymour Hoffman is Father Brendan Flynn, an insightful priest who perceives imperfections within himself just as easily as he can in others. And Amy Adams plays Sister James, whose bright-eyed innocence almost makes the other nuns seems scandalous.

In short, Sister Beauvier suspects that Father Flynn is molesting one of the altar boys, a new student at their private Catholic school, St. Nicholas. Sister James is dragged into the ensuing fray. Conflict. More conflicts. Exeunt. The end.

“Doubt” is almost all dialogue — very clean — and could have possibly been rated PG. It is worth seeing for its acting alone: Streep, Hoffman, Adams — bravo all. But looking at its principals, we knew “Doubt” would give us worthy performances.

What we did not know, however (but I suspected it), is how “Doubt” would be riddled with ambiguity, subjecting us to tangibly taste of the same internal struggle that is suggested by its title. The film (and no doubt the play) engages in this game with us where we teeter back and forth with our own doubts, which follow suit with the characters’ suspicions. Brilliant.

And yet, all along we come to desperately depend on an eventual, definitive resolution — the long-awaited answers to our burning questions. Unfortunately, “Doubt’s” precarious dance with dubiety is its ultimate undoing.

Directed by John Patrick Shanley
Meryl Streep / Philip Seymour Hoffman / Amy Adams
Drama 104 min.
MPAA: PG-13 (for thematic material)

U.S. Release Date: December 12, 2008
Copyright 2008: 331