It is 1964, the Bronx. The nation is still reeling from the assassination of a beloved president who represented vitality, courage and change. At St. Nicholas, a young charismatic priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) strives to make the Church more approachable to its schoolkids and parishioners. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), trained a generation earlier under more rigid guidelines, is convinced that his methods promote a permissiveness that will ultimately undermine the Church. And caught in the middle is Sister James (Amy Adams), who must reconcile her own beliefs - much closer to the Father's - with that of her superior's. Sister James sees Father Flynn as a welcome ray of light in the doom-and-gloom atmosphere perpetuated by the strict Sister Aloysius. Flynn agrees, pointing out to the young nun, "The dragon is hungry," when Aloysius yells for a student to come see her.
But after a black student, Donald Miller returns uncomfortably from a meeting with the priest, Sister James starts suspecting Father Flynn of something unspeakable. Sister Aloysius is only too eager to confront the priest regarding the matter, stopping just short of an outright accusation of moral impropriety. And she is only too happy to push the matter to its limits in order to get Flynn out of "her" school.
John Patrick Shanley's Doubt is based on his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Ostensibly the story is about the question of whether or not Father Flynn committed the crime he is accused of by Sister Aloysius, pursuing her line of questioning without any evidence save for her moral certainty. However, it is easy to see the metaphor for some of the personal sacrifices we've made in the pursuit of the faceless fear that currently grips our nation. Are we right to attack someone or some thing without any hard evidence of their involvement in criminal activities? What happens to us when the possibility that we were wrong in our assumptions grows until it cannot be ignored? Can we hide behind morality when prejudice is the impetus for our actions? Shanley's film asks all of these questions, and doesn't always answer them successfully.
Shanley is astute enough to complicate this thin allegory by casting doubts on each side of the question. Yes, Father Flynn offers hope instead of fear. But can we judge a more insidious purpose in his lecture to the schoolboys about keeping their fingernails clean? And why does he indulge in moments of gluttony and vice, such as smoking, or the extra lumps of sugar in his tea? Sister Aloysius is not exactly the paragon of virtue herself, enjoying the occasional news reports on a transistor radio she confiscated from a student who was listening to it in class. But she is honest enough to acknowledge her momentary weakness. And she hides a streak of kindness, evident in the way she protects an older nun who is going blind from being discovered so she won't get released from her duties.
The cast unanimously give excellent performances. Hoffman plays Flynn with the right amounts of big brother, chummy pal, and understanding confidant, recasting the popular representative stereotype of the Church - the mean, old, Catholic nun as depicted by Sister Aloysius - with the fresher notion of the hip priest you wish you had grown up listening to at Mass. As the naive Sister James, Adams convincingly plays the role of student, an empty vessel seeking knowledge and experience, yet unable to decide if her mentor should be Aloysius or Flynn. Viola Davis is significantly memorable as Mrs. Miller, the student's mother. In just two scenes, she is able to hold her own, emotionally sparring with the legendary Streep, as she wonders whether the pursuit of the truth about Father Flynn is worth all the turmoil this would ultimately bring her son. But amid stellar performances Streep's is a cut above the rest.
Streep is always the character you are with as the story unfolds. And she steals every scene she is in, even when in the company of the other illustrious actors. She can be disarmingly funny, such as when Sister James argues on Father Flynn's behalf, and a bulb in the room blows out. Sister Aloysius declares to the innocent young nun, "Look at that. You blew out my light." But she can also be devastating, using God as an inadvertent co-conspirator, witheringly declaring the same statement to Father Flynn when the bulb blows out again, as he defends himself. Surprisingly, it is her interpretation of the character which also undermines the central point of Doubt. She makes Sister Aloysius so convincing in her argument, that it is hard to believe she might have it all wrong. Streep's multilayered performance is probably the best I've seen all year.
In the end, Shanley's themes seem to fade into the gray areas he is working to conjure up. But its relevance to current events, and the performances, led by Streep's, are powerful enough to warrant viewing Doubt immediately.
Doubt is in limited release.
Still provided courtesy of Miramax Films.
As I continue reviewing the best that cinema had to offer in 2008, I'd like to pause before listing the 10 best movies of the year this Friday, and reflect on some individual achievements today.
Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler - It is a bravura performance that reveals enough about Rourke to dispel any questions about the limitations of his expressiveness due to the punishment his face has taken over the years.
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Doubt - Streep is so convincing that she convinced her writer/director to rethink the point of his Iraq war parable.
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight - Some wonder whether this performance would be awarded the amount of recognition it has received if Ledger hadn't died. But even if the spectre of his death did not haunt the film at its edges, it would still be the spookiest submergence of an actor's personality in a role that I've seen all year.
Best Supporting Actress: Chiara Mastroianni, Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - Mastroianni charms the viewer with her portrayal of Sylvia, the beguiling daughter-in-law that discovers her life might have been different had she known earlier that two of her husband's relatives competed amongst themselves to win her heart. Even resignation to being a housewife is not enough to mask her incandescence, not an easy achievement when sharing the screen with her legendary mother - the great Catherine Deneuve.
Best Ensemble Cast: The cast of Rachel Getting Married - Whatever my problems with its phony setting, Anne Hathaway's tour-de-force performance is still not enough to steal the spotlight from the rest of this film's supporting players. Bill Irwin and Debra Winger - playing her divorced parents - and Rosemarie DeWitt as the titular older sister Rachel give raw improvisatory performances that illustrate the love and recriminations that bind a family. And even the minor players in the film seem to have a life beyond the confines of the movie.
Best Newcomer: Laura Ramsey, The Ruins - In what could have been the thankless role of whining victim that seems to always be the center of attention during the early parts of a horror film, Ramsey instead gets sympathy for refusing to play the character as weak. With more spunk than any of her fellow monster fodder, Ramsey's character manages to be the one that the viewer can most identify with in this surprisingly effective, underrated thriller.
Best Comeback: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler - My own review for the film points out how it's not really a comeback if you haven't gone anywhere. And Rourke has been very present and engaged in his career for quite a few years, now. But let's just say that Hollywood has finally let him out of the doghouse. Be glad that he is now more marketable than ever, and he can start playing some leads again.
Best Animated Film: Wall·E - I talked about this film in Monday's post, but I'll reiterate. This one is strong enough to be counted alongside some strong competition for best movie of the year.
Best Documentary: Waltz with Bashir - A documentary that is totally justified in its animated presentation. The truth being revealed here is not about the Israeli director's involvement in a disturbing attack on Lebanese. It is about how his mind fails to reconcile his participation in the attack with his own opinion of the violence he's capable of.
Best Foreign Language Film: Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - Desplechin captures everything that drives this traditionally American genre, the family reunion film; adapts it with an eye to French sensibilities; remembers to give it visual and aural flourishes; and does it in a completely realistic way. Aside from its performances, Demme's Rachel Getting Married compares pretty poorly to this film.
Best Cinematography: Colin Watkinson, The Fall - A stunning visual achievement that eschews CGI marvels for actual in-camera artistry.
Best Original Score: Grégoire Hetzel, Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - The lush score serves as a warm counterpoint to the sharp squabbling that pervades this film.
Best Original Song: Bruce Springsteen, The Wrestler - The devastatingly tragic Randy "The Ram" Robinson is captured by this simple lyric, "...Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before..."
Best Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Truly supporting the story, the effects are marvelously picaresque when depicting Button's travels, and unusually subtle when illustrating his gradual decline into youth.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Nicholas Meyer, Elegy - Best known for his Star Trek films, Meyer succeeds at adapting Philip Roth, an author whose sensibility has been notoriously difficult to capture. Based on The Dying Animal, the film is an example of Meyer's theory on the central appeal of a movie, "A good story to me is one that, after I’ve told it to you, you understand why I wanted to tell it.”
Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York - Kaufman's creations are always wildly original. But this movie consistently inverts expectations in a way that would both impress and confound screenwriting teacher Robert McKee (the real-life one, not the Brian Cox character from Adaptation). A downbeat look at one artist's impulse to make a mark in life that celebrates the mundane and condemns the obsessive pursuit of creative accomplishment.
Best Director: Steven Soderbergh, Che (Roadshow Version) - Soderbergh takes pains to present an objective film about a controversial historical figure in the most unexpected way possible. He makes two movies about him. The first part, The Argentine, builds Guevara up to be a revolutionary hero. The second part, Guerilla, tears him down by demonstrating his arrogance and remoteness towards his comrades. Together, they form a well-rounded look at why Guevara is both glorified and demonized.
On Friday, I'll post my top 10 films of the year. But because I don't want to address the following in that post, here are the worst films I saw this year, in alphabetical order:
A Corte do Norte (The Northern Land), dir. João Botelho - Visually sumptuous, but pretentious to the extreme, this Portuguese film was stultifyingly boring.
Flawless, dir. Michael Radford - Demi Moore should never play a Brit again, but especially not in a period drama opposite Michael Caine.
Hounddog, dir. Deborah Kampmeier - Dakota Fanning should never be raped in a film again, but especially not in a period drama that pretends it has something important to say about exploiting children.
Pineapple Express, dir. David Gordon Green - I admire David Gordon Green's films. Judd Apatow's films make me howl with laughter. But David Gordon Green directing a Judd Apatow film? Not so much.
Slumdog Millionaire, dir. Danny Boyle - That Gran Torino is being accused of racism for wearing its controversy on its sleeve while Boyle's celebrated film is practically drowning in white ethnocentric prejudice is the real crime.
For more on the Best of 2008:
Best of 2008: Animated Features
Best of 2008: Oscar Nominations Open Thread
Best of 2008: The 10 Best Films of the Year
