Doubt: Rating: 3.5 stars

A determined nun (Meryl Streep) sets out to prove a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) guilty of child abuse.

Doubt (2008)
2008 · PG-13 · Drama
Reviewed May 11, 2009
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I am on an unintentional child sex abuse kick this past week — oh god, please let me rephrase that. What I mean is that I keep coming across things relating to child abuse — Kathy Marks’ Lost Paradise, Roman Polanski news, stuff about human trafficking, etc. I didn’t have any sick sex stuff in mind when I rented this film; I just wanted to see a new release. Oh my god I said release. Oh my god I am still typing. PLEASE LET US TALK ABOUT THE FILM.

It’s obvious that the film has its origins in a play. The heavy-handedness of certain bits here and there — a cat seeking a mouse, a lightbulb that constantly blinks out — all smack of the stage, and the dialogue occasionally feels the same. The director uses a few too many Dutch angles, which I’m not particularly fond of anyway and which don’t ratchet up the tension as much as he apparently thinks they do. Fortunately, the three central actors are talented enough to keep things rolling well. Amy Adams, in particular, is a godsend for her role as the innocent young nun whose statements set the ball rolling; not many actresses could pull off such naivety in a believable way, but Adams has the sweet, open face for it. (Even in the ugly bonnet, she is cheek-pinchably adorable.) The high point of the film is Viola Davis’ single-scene appearance as the hard-working mother of the boy in question; her quiet desperation to earn a better life for her boy — whatever the cost — is simultaneously repellant and sympathetic. It’s a timely reminder that in the fight for survival, morality often loses.

The ending offers no easy resolutions, and doesn’t even clear up the question of the priest’s guilt. My husband and I got into a shouting match after the movie; I had a theory, he had a theory, and we were both convinced the other was dead wrong. (For the record, he was dead wrong, and I think he only kept up the fight to annoy me.) Personally, I think that Father Flynn was guilty; Sister Aloysius didn’t have hard evidence and was only going on gut instinct, but my gut instinct agrees with hers. He wouldn’t have resigned if he didn’t have something to hide. My husband’s theory was that Flynn had been setting up the whole situation from the start, as a way to take Sister Aloysius down a notch and instill doubt in her mind, which… what? Why the hell would he risk his job and his reputation just to mess with a woman who, at the beginning of the story, was merely an annoyance to him? You see why I had to start throwing things at my husband, don’t you?