DOUBT

(Pic: Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Intellectually challenging, always captivating drama. (Review by Billy Suter)

Complex characters and issues, exemplary acting by a core cast of four, direction that is mostly low-fuss but occasionally (effectively) overwrought, and a story offering no clear-cut answers, no neat and tidy conclusions, lots of pause for thought and personal analysis.

All this can be expected from Doubt, an intellectually challenging, always captivating drama which, directed by John Patrick Shanley, is based on his hit play – a four-times Tony Award-winner, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winner and now a five-times Oscar-nominated movie.

Set in 1964 at New York’s Saint Nicholas Church School in the Bronx, Doubt tells of a clergyman, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), being accused of improper behaviour with a 12-year-old boy, the first black pupil at the school over which he presides.

His accuser is a battleaxe of a principal, the ever-suspicious, unsmiling and cold Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep in marvellous form yet again), who has never been fond of Father Flynn. They are opposites. She is an old-school toughie always on the scout for sinners and the bad in people; a woman so against change she resents even the invention of the ballpoint pen. He, on the other hand, is outgoing, ever-smiling, friendly, liberal, very open to new ideas. Sister Aloysius has no doubt in her mind that the silver-haired Father Flynn is guilty.

When her accusation is sparked by whispers of concern from the always-less-than-certain Sister James (Amy Adams), the boy’s teacher, Sister Aloysius goes all out to bulldoze Father Flynn towards confessing and resigning.

This tension and the constant, increasingly fiery interactions between the accuser and the accused, both defiantly insisting the other has got the facts wrong, pull most attention.

But Doubt doesn’t only work as a did-he-or-didn’t he? drama. It poses intriguing questions about faith and religion, about resistance to things new, about the dangers of jumping to conclusions, being too quick to assume the worse.

The film stands to win Oscars for its crisp, provocative screenplay and all its impeccable leads –Streep, Hoffman, Adams and the little-known Viola Davis, who, as the mother of the boy, delivers a great emotional punch in an extended scene with Streep, a scene which sheds some unexpected new light on to an already contentious issue. Rating 8/10 – Billy Suter

Interestingly, Oprah Winfrey had expressed great interest in playing Davis’s role, but reportedly was never auditioned. Also of note is that Natalie Portman was apparently offered, but declined, the role of Sister James.