Reviews
Doubt
February 6 2009
John Patrick Shanley
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams
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“What do you do when you’re not sure?” The opening line from the pulpit of progressive priest Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a helpful signpost to anyone left hanging by the film’s cryptic title. It is one of many pertinent questions raised by Doubt.
But first, you have to ask: what compels a writer to name his work after a slippery emotional abstract, thereby professing to tackle a thorny conceptual debate that has troubled philosophers and religious thinkers for thousands of years? Is it a God-complex, an irony deficit, plain stupidity, or a mixture of all three?
Well, unbelievers, writer-director John Patrick Shanley’s original play scooped a host of awards, including a Pulitzer, and Miramax saw fit to pour money into its adaptation. Hollywood works in mysterious ways. Perhaps we could give Shanley the benefit of the doubt. It was probably, after all, the producers who sniffed the awards potential of a hollowly conceived, bombastic script set in a 1960s Irish-Catholic Bronx community, about a charismatic priest suspected of abusing a black altar boy by a reactionary, embittered nun.
But we must dig deeper, for what possessed the once credible Meryl Streep to take on the caricatured role of crusading Sister Aloysius? And why is her performance so uniformly unconvincing? Maybe because it relies on cartoonish mannerisms such as permanently pursed lips, a lemon-sucking expression and much rosary-clutching. Or it may be that she has to deliver lines such as “the wind is awfully peripatetic this year” and “it is my job to outshine the fox in cleverness” without a jot of irony.
A blessed certainty comes to us in the form of Amy Adams, in default nauseating-ingénue-mode as the wide-eyed nun who raises the alarm about Father Flynn’s relationship with the boy. The basis of her suspicions and the ensuing scandal remain as opaque at the end of the film as they are at the outset. Father Flynn’s most incriminating attribute appears to be his creepily long fingernails, which of course could as easily denote a pederast as a committed amateur harpist. Where does one draw the line? The final judgement rests with each of us.
Anticipation:
Enjoyment:
In Retrospect:
"in the pursuit of wrong doing, one steps away from god. Of course there is a price ::clenches cross:: …I have doubts, I have such doubts."
incredible.
Written by kyle on November 3rd, 2009 at 20:12
couldn't agree more about Streep's performance, certainly the worst I've seen from her, especially at the ending, which was embarrassingly bad acting. Good review
Written by BPaul on January 1st, 2010 at 15:57
DOUBT left no "doubt" with me as to its qualities; I yawned too many times to find the film engaging, interesting or appealing. Meryl Streep, my all-time female film artist could not have done worse (is she slipping these Mamma Mia days which was another of her "slip ups"?). The plot plods along interspersed with snarling and witchy Streep in the role of mother superior and a baby-faced priest who can do no wrong except to raise "doubts"… unless you are an intuitive and astrology type of person, the can be no doubt about the priest's innocence in spite of the mother superior's quick death-like judgment on a good man. Curses, Streep, how could you play such a mundane and supercilious role?
Written by Tom Ricks on January 6th, 2010 at 15:52