"Doubt"

Doubt ****

Doubt is a cinematic masterwork. With Hollywood overbrimming with schlock and nonsensicality, Doubt is an absolutely spellbinding pleasure to behold—a sophisticated work of art that yields no easy answers, challenging its audience at nearly every turn. As taut as the finest suspense thrillers, Doubt forces us to gaze inwardly at our uncertainties and our bouts of self-righteousness.
Directed by John Patrick Shanley of Joe versus the Volcano fame and based upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Doubt is an acting tour-de-force, with potential Oscar nods awaiting at least three of its four principal performers. The film’s superb ensemble cast is led by acting heavyweights Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep, although the movie’s real surprise is Viola Davis’s masterful turn as a troubled young mother at the heart of the screenplay’s conflict.
The movie takes place in 1964 at the Saint Nicholas Church School in the Bronx. Under the tutelage of Father Brendan Flynn (Hoffman), the Catholic school enjoys a progressive orientation, much to the chagrin of Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Streep), who sees the world through starkly conservative and deeply suspicious eyes.
The movie’s central crisis emerges when questions arise regarding Father Flynn’s relationship with one of his charges. Did Father Flynn behave inappropriately with Donald Muller (Joseph Foster II)? Did he break his priestly vows?
Shrouded, quite naturally, in layers of doubt and uncertainty, this unresolved dilemma leads to a bitter, acrimonious faceoff between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius with young Sister James (Amy Adams) acting as their impressionable bystander. In many ways, Sister James acts as our own unruly and uncertain conscience. Do we harbor doubts about the allegations regarding Father Flynn? Or, conversely, are we overwrought, like Sister Aloysius, by our certitude and self-righteousness?
As if things couldn’t be even more complicated, Donald’s mother (Davis) enters the screenplay, only to render things even more murky and irresolute. As Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius draw their internal ethical and spiritual battle lines, Mrs. Muller reminds us of the real world concerns that exist just beyond the confines of the churchyard.
To the film’s great credit, Doubt doesn’t pull any punches, nor does it offer pat solutions to the convoluted issues that it dares to broach. It is an ordeal in the best sense of the word—as vexing and engaging as any movie in recent memory.
Doubt is, quite simply, one of the year’s best films.