While Ron Howard transforms Frost/Nixon into a living, breathing motion picture, writer-director John Patrick Shanley never quite makes it past the curtain call with Doubt. Adapting his own Pulitzer Prize-winning theatrical triumph, Shanley doesn’t possess Howard’s instincts in front of the camera, resulting in a movie that remains resolutely stage-bound. But that’s not necessarily a sign of defeat: No one could ever really argue that Mike Nichols’ superb Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? managed to shuck the playhouse chains, either. Doubt is no Woolf, of course, but blessed with a quartet of strong performances, it’s weighty enough to earn its multiplex bookings.
Set in 1964, the film examines a battle of wills between the holy rollers at St. Nicholas in the Bronx. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the (mostly) humorless head of the school, striking fear not only in the students but also in some of the more timid nuns like Sister James (Amy Adams). Sister Aloysius isn’t crazy about Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose desire for a more progressive and open-minded direction within the Catholic church flies in the face of her old-school ideology. So when Sister James airs her suspicions that Father Flynn is being a bit too chummy with one of the young boys under his wing, Sister Aloysius works on getting him ousted. But is Sister Aloysius truly convinced of Father Flynn’s guilt (for her part, Sister James wavers on the issue), or is she merely using the issue as a way to force out the theological thorn in her side?
Pulitzer notwithstanding, Shanley’s play was disappointing in the manner in which it took the obvious way out. The movie can’t overcome that hurdle, though it can be argued that Shanley adds an extra layer of ambiguity to the proceedings. Still, what really matters here is the cast, and there’s no doubt that Streep, Hoffman, Adams and Viola Davis (as the mother of the allegedly molested student) all do heavenly work.
This article appears in Dec 23-30, 2008.
