Doubt

Set in 1964, Amy Adams stars as Sister James – a relatively new nun assigned to a Bronx Catholic school run by the tough as nails, no-nonsense, authoritarian nun, Sister Beauvier (Meryl Streep). While she and Sister James don’t see eye to eye about how to teach and control the children, the young nun seeks out Sister Beauvier when she becomes concerned about what might be an inappropriate relationship between the school’s first African-American student, and Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

What has happened?

Do you want the truth?

Can you handle the truth?

Doubt is a good movie that features great performances and great moments. Writer/director John Patrick Shanley (who also wrote the stage play) could have done more to build the mystery about Father Flynn and often makes little allusions to what I thought would lead to more knowledge about the charges leveled against him and more details about Flynn’s behaviors, but Shanley forsakes this path to focus on the showdown between Flynn and Beauvier.

Maybe consciously, Shanley challenges the audience to pick sides between the two and make us marvel at their battle as being more important than the truth. The battle is between old and new, compassion and tough love, and men versus women instead of discovering what is going on between the students and Flynn. Shanley throws in all sorts of symbolism as characters talk about the wind changing and storms pound down during the most troublesome moments in Doubt, but it is the acting that makes you want to see this movie, not the writing.

Hoffman is brilliant as the possible villain, or innocent victim. He shows great charm on the altar to win over the audience, love for the kids to make us feel like he might be a good guy, but, also tosses in a few guilty expressions to make us question the priest. Much like Sister James, we try to decipher it all to determine which side we will take.

Then, Streep becomes the kind of nun who haunts the nightmares of Catholic school alumni across the world. While Adams is too sing songy and plays the nun as too naïve to be believed, Streep makes Beauvier into a lion who can make anyone shake in their boots with a withering stare, but even finds some moments to show some compassion and vulnerability.

Most of all, it’s Viola Davis, as the young student’s mother, who wows you when you see Doubt. She runs through an entire range of emotions in about five minutes and makes the viewer understand the conundrum this woman faces. Her exchange with Streep is the kind of scene every actor should watch over and over again to see obvious, but restrained emotion and how you can make a complicated thought process and troubled explanation easy to understand.

Doubt isn’t the best story, but it does pack a wallop.

Doubt is rated PG-13 for thematic material.