CINEMA: Doubt

Doubt started out in life as a play – and it really shows in this film version, which feels far more like something you would watch at the theatre than in the cinema.

In the mid-1960s a new priest arrives at St. Nicholas Catholic School in the Bronx.  He is Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an energetic, well-liked man who wants to move with the times and modernise things for the students. However, his intentions are continually undermined by the stern, disapproving principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who thinks things are fine as they are, thank you very much.  When the school admits its first black student, Donald (Joseph Foster II), even Sister Aloysius can’t stop change from happening. Then young, naïve Sister James (Amy Adams) reports an incident involving Father Flynn and Donald to Sister Aloysius who makes it her mission to get the priest removed from her school.

While the acting throughout is excellent (Viola Davis as Donald’s mother even manages to blow Meryl Streep away) there’s something very dry and way too theatrical for Doubt to really work as a film. Also, writer/director John Patrick Shanley deliberately never lets the audience know if Father Flynn has actually done anything wrong or not and this doubt, although it forms the core of the story, actually gets very annoying because it stops you connecting with the characters on any deep level. Is Father Flynn truly a monster or has he been the victim of rumour, deceit, and doubt? It’s left up to you to decide. 

Dee Pilgrim