Doubt

Doubt (2008). When scrolling through the list of newly arrived DVD rentals on the Homepal service, I look out for the cast in it and typically will pick up titles because of an actor. I picked up Doubt without knowing what the show was about but only because actress Meryl Streep was in it.

The film is based on an award winning play of the same name by American Playwright John Patrick Shanley. The drama takes place at an American church which a semi-liberal priest, Father Flynn, preaches at, and attached school which is run by a very strict nun, Sister Aloysius. Their two ideologies and character dispositions eventually clash over an allegedly ‘improper’ relationship Sister Aloysius accuses Father Flynn of having with a 12 year old African-American boy in the school.

Doubt has four adult leads: Father Flynn played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius, the lovely Amy Adams – from Enchanted – as Sister James, a young nun caught in the middle between the two, and Viola Davis as the boy’s mother.

All four were nominated for acting at the Academy Awards – and very deservedly so. Doubt is a dialog-driven drama with no explosions, no violence, and no guns, and the four leads put in amazing performances that will likely divide audiences into four sides.

Davis has just one scene and with Sister Aloysius, but it’s a very powerful one in which she refuses to be intimidated by the Sister’s accusations and misgivings about Flynn.

This isn’t the only character confrontation scene in the movie that spell-binds audiences: there’re several others between Sisters Aloysius and James, and with Flynn. In every one of them, heck throughout the entire film, Meryl Streep lives and breathes in her role as the conservative nun.

Both the play and film never quite solidly show whether Flynn did indeed have an improper relationship with the boy. There’s instead little bits of evidence throughout to support either conclusion, and audiences are left to decide on their own who to finally believe.

On the overall, Doubt is a film that’ll leave you thinking well after it’s ended.