Doubt (2008)

Story: A young nun, Sister James (Amy Adams), brings her suspicions to the school's principal, Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), that the parish's new priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) may be interfering with the school's lone black student Donald Miller (Joseph Foster).

If for no other reason than it's set in 1964, I kept waiting for someone to revive the euphemism "interfering." No one did, so I shall take up the cause.

If I tell you that the performances are uniformly excellent -- particularly Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller, who in her scant screen time really makes you desperate to know the entire story, to know what she means by "character," and deeply sad -- can we move on to why this story doesn't work best on screen?

There's a lot of business about the opening and closing of doors and windows, and it's a theatrical conceit. It's not that it doesn't work or that it doesn't contain meaning; it's that it's constrained by stage business. On the stage, you need to have people both explaining what they are doing with doors and windows as well as actually doing with said doors and windows. It's a question of angles and sets for the theatre audience.

In a movie, you need to show not tell. It was late in the movie that I realized that this is what was missing - writer-director John Patrick Shanley, who adapted his own play, wasn't doing enough with the language of cinema to tell the story. Someone closes a door, and it's a Big Fucking Deal, this closing of the door, only we watch it happen solely from the inside of the room with the person's back to us. What we needed, though, was the repetition of watching this door close from the outside. Inside the room is one thing; outside the room is just as important. Would the door latching echo in the hallways or would it be silent? None of this would give anything away, but it would help layer meaning into what's meant to be a complex take on truth, reason, doubt, objectivity, and subjectivity. Again, it is all those things, but it's closed off, at a remove.

What happens inside the room I won't reveal. I will tell you that it's meant to be the Big Confrontation, and that doesn't really pan out either. Whether it's the product of the movie's airless quality, whether it was some resistance or hesitation on the actors parts, or whether it's a natural by-product of knowing that you won't get any answers there, I couldn't say for sure, although I'm leaning toward the second option. Traditionally, Shanley tells only the actor playing Flynn if Flynn is guilty, and I wonder if that hampers his performance in anyway. You have to play it straight down the line no matter what, so what good does it do to know?

Sidebar: Howard Shore wrote a score for this movie. I don't remember hearing any non-diegetic music. What does that mean? Also, I love Alice Drummond's voice.

All of this is pretty negative, I know. I'm not suggesting that this is a bad movie. It's obviously an outstanding play, and, I suspect, a better play than movie. Maybe a few more drafts or a different director would have taken it further. Then again, maybe those changes would have ruined it. B