Mortal combat

January 5, 2009

John Patrick Shanley's new film Doubt lays bare the medieval quality of the Catholic Church.

DOUBT IS part of a trend in American film and television that examines the suffocating conformity of American life in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the forces that brought about monumental political, cultural and social change in the following decades.

The popular AMC cable series Mad Men is one example of this; the soon-to-be-released Revolutionary Road, based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, is another. Many writers and directors have said that they are responding to the attempt by George W. Bush to replicate certain aspects of the McCarthy-Eisenhower era in this decade.

Doubt, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, is based on his Tony Award-winning Broadway play of the same name. "At the time I wrote the play, again," Shanley says in a recent interview, "it was a time of great certitude--it was the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and I didn't feel certain, I felt doubtful...I wanted to write something...that shows what is lost and what is gained when the world changes."

It's 1964, and the winds of change are pushing their way into the musty, run-down halls of St. Nicholas School in the Bronx. The fictional St. Nicholas is taken straight from Shanley's own experience in Catholic school.

"I went to a church school in the Bronx in the early '60s," recounts Shanley. "I had the Sisters of Charity [as teachers] who wore these very particular, very peculiar Victorian black bonnets; I had an interesting and good experience there. It was a time of great certitude; it was a quieter time, and yet it was on the cusp of great change."

"Change" makes its first appearance at the fictional St. Nicholas in the form of its first Black student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), and a liberal priest, Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who believes that the church must be more "welcoming" or face continued decline.

Standing in the way is St. Nicholas' longstanding principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who will literally do anything to hold back the tide of progress. Aloysius is a tyrant of the old school. She holds court nightly at dinner, where the aging nuns sit in uncomfortable silence, waiting for the appropriate moment to say something pleasing to her.

The fictional St. Nicholas was typical of many of the urban Catholic schools of the era in the Northeast. The student body was largely drawn from Irish and Italian neighborhoods. Nuns taught the classes, for the most part, while the Irish-dominated priesthood lorded over all. The Catholic Church was (and still is) a man's world.

Review: Movies

Doubt, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.

Sister Aloysius liberally doles out physical discipline to her students, while barking at them with a sarcastic edge. She is the chief enforcer at the school and clearly enjoys it way too much. Father Flynn refers to her as the "dragon."

The younger Sister James (Amy Adams), Aloysius' protégé, just doesn't have the same hatred, fanaticism or misguided sense of duty (or whatever combination of all three) in her heart as her superior--another sign of change. She recoils in one scene when she starts acting toward her unruly students in a way that Aloysius would.


ONE OF the great strengths of Doubt is that the medieval quality of the Catholic Church is laid bare for all to see. The peculiar bonnets worn by the nuns are one thing, but the practice of nuns adopting men's name is just weird. Aloysius rails against students using "ballpoint pens" and is discomforted by the emerging sexuality of the female students.

But what really drives her up a tree is Father Flynn. He is everything that Sister Aloysius finds annoying. He plays basketball, wants to have sermons that address the worldly needs of his congregation, and--to the horror of Aloysius--he wants to include a secular song in the school's Christmas pageant.

Yet, it is only after Father Flynn befriends Donald Miller that she decides to destroy him. Flynn has developed a close bond with Miller and has become his advocate at the school. He makes him an alter boy, a conspicuous spot at Sunday mass for an all-white congregation, and, despite Aloysius' suggestion that Miller be kept in the background of the Christmas pageant, Flynn wants him to have a leading role.

It's impossible these days to watch a film about the relationship between a priest and an alter boy, and not immediately think of the very real sexual and physical abuse carried out by priests for decades. Shanley clearly thought that audiences would carry this into theaters with them when he wrote the play and the screenplay.

After Flynn has a private meeting with Miller during class time, Aloysius decides that he has made improper "advances" toward his protégé and enlists the help of Sister James to collect the "evidence" to get rid of him. She even tries to get Miller's mother (Viola Davis) in on the lynch mob.

Miller's mother refuses in one of the best and most painful scenes in Doubt. She tells Aloysius that she doesn't want trouble--after all, she sent her son to St. Nicholas to escape the racist violence that Donald suffered in the public schools.

But there is no evidence against Flynn, only innuendo. When Flynn confronts Aloysius and demands her evidence, she says she only has her "certainty." In the end, Flynn asks for a transfer and is, in effect, promoted to lead a prominent parish in the city.

Is this an example of the old boy pedophile network protecting one of their own or a sign of disapproval of Sister Aloysius? We'll never know.

Doubt is a good film, but in the mad rush to have films qualify for the Oscars this time of year, I think it will suffer from a being "over-hyped."

I also think that one of the small flaws of the film is that it still feels too much like a play. Live theater is great for intimacy between the actors and the audience, but films allow so much more. I kept feeling that I didn't know what made the main characters tick; short flashbacks could have fleshed out the story better.

Despite these small flaws, there is no doubt that you should see it.

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