Doubt

Very few things scream Oscar season like Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman and when you combine their talents in one movie, it is an Oscar's wet dream. Such is the case with Doubt. Throw in 1 time nominee Amy Adams and a story about Catholic pedophilia and you have the makings of an Oscar sweep. Not so fast, though because the movie is written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. This is the man responsible for writing Congo and the last movie he directed was Joe Versus the Volcano, not exactly movies that were winning awards, or winning anything positive for that matter. Yet, on stage Doubt was a success, critically and so it made sense that transferring it to the screen and sticking Hoffman and Streep in it, all would be good, right?

Set around the time of JFK's assassination, Doubt takes place in a Catholic church and school, where Sister Beauvier(Streep) is the principal and she rules with an iron fist. She is a prison warden and she likes it that way. She is uneasy about the new Father, Father Flynn. Flynn gives sermons on doubt and he is a friendly man who preaches love, compassion and understanding. He wants to add secular songs to the Christmas pageant and wants to bring the church forward. Meanwhile, Sister James(Adams) is a young teacher and she is worried about the lack of warmth from the sisters and teaches her class without the super strict rules that Sister Beauvier tries to get her to enforce. One day Sister James thinks she sees things that do not seem right. Donald Miller, a student is called to a private meeting with Father Flynn. He comes back and Sister James thinks she smells alcohol on his breath. He is lifeless and sad. Later she sees Father Flynn putting one of Donald's shirts back in his locker. She tells Sister Beauvier what she thinks because Sister Beauvier warned everyone to keep an eye on Father Flynn because she did not like him. Sister James and Sister Beauvier call Father Flynn into an office and state their unsubstantiated claims. He gives a logical reason for everything, but is he lying? He has moved around a lot in the church and the church has been known to protect their priests.

I have a tell. When I am bored in a movie, it is not difficult to know. Erik figured it out years ago. I fidget. I do not mean just shifting in my chair because I do that often, but I get unusually fidgety. I check my watch often, but the biggest sign that I am bored is when my watch comes off. When I take my watch off to start playing with it or whatever, the movie has lost me. I believe about 35 minutes into Doubt, my watch was off. At first, I could not put my finger on it. The acting is phenomenal and the one scene where Streep, Hoffman and Adams share the screen is a knock out blow. The writing is exceptional and the story is interesting and I loved how ambiguous it was about whether or not The Father was innocent or guilty. Yet, there I was, sitting in The Tower Theater, fidgeting, checking my watch and eventually removing it. Something just was not working. Then in one moment, like a giant gust of wind, it hit me. Well, it hit me like a giant gust of wind, because it was a giant gust of wind. A giant gust of wind in the movie directly after Streep said something about the winds of change. It was not enough for her to say "The winds of change," the director felt need to include actual wind! There it was, the moment that brought the movie into focus for me.

I understand the idea of using weather or setting as a metaphor for something else. Yes, I get German Expressionism. it is easy to grasp but according to film classes, it is the end all be all in movies. Movies are brilliant when they use weather a symbol or metaphor, brilliant! I do not, on principal, take issue with it. I take issue with a director not trusting his writer, his actors or his audience to get the ideas. His actors are on screen acting their collective asses off and he ruins it. His screenwriter wrote an amazing script and he ruined it. His audience is most likely smart enough to appreciate the great level of talent involved and he ruined it. The whole thing is made worse when you realize he was his own screenwriter! Rarely has a movie had such a high level of acting and such a low level of directing. Here was a man who was just out of his league. Someone should have stepped in on this project and realized all of these amazing performances were going to go to waste, especially Viola Davis. Davis, in 1 scene as the young man's mother, gives the performance that makes careers. She is unbelievably heart breaking and it is even more impressive when you realize she is with Meryl Streep the whole scene and I have to give Streep credit because she gave the woman the scene. In fact, all of the actors are very giving, in the whole movie. They all believed in the project and they were let down.

A movie like this should have left me with questions and I should have been pondering the questions the movie poses. I should want to discuss with others my thoughts on the guilt or innocence of Father Flynn, or what Sister Beauvier means at the end when she breaks down and says she has doubts, but honestly I did not care. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to get away from the German Expressionism and the bad handling of it all from the director. I wanted to get away from the crows, the dead rats, the feathers, the open windows and the literal winds of change.

Final Grade: C-. but the acting gets an A.