Doubt (2008)

The first black student in a Catholic school. Altar boys. Priest. I don’t like where this is heading. Squirmy as that sounds, interpreted another way it sounds impossible: Meryl Streep opposite Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Priest versus nun. Luckily, Doubt had a head start. It was written for the stage—this film was not adapted from a novel. The story was adapted from the award-winning play of the same name, by John Patrick Shanley.

Regardless of form, one must consider what an intelligent narrative decision it is to place two socially esteemed and trusted roles in conflict with another. This especially works for film because I can think of no serious attempts to portray a priest or a sister as real, flawed human beings (comments welcome), rather than the traditional role they might fulfill in society, and within our minds. Shanley deserves all the credit for this. (Doesn’t he?) It is geniusly simple and simply genius to pose two morally upright souls against one another as the central conflict. It’s genius because conflict forces these two roles, which can easily fall into types, to be treated as human beings. Conflict makes us see their dark sides. I often wonder how fiction writers and storytellers arrive at such decisions. Did Shanley wisely decide on those two characters and their conflict from the beginning? Or, did he write and fight through draft after draft to find his story? Try it = write a piece where two “good” characters have a conflict, a fight.

There are a few scenes about foul shots and American history that are quite topical and shallow, tragically uninsightful and unoriginal, unfortunate to my experience of the movie. Fortunately, the scenes appear early, and the conflict builds enough to where I’m only focused on the characters and what they will do next. In Revision = ask why something feels shallow. Question its necessity.

An elegant aspect of the conflict revolves around lack of communication. It makes me wonder how much suspicion and a lack of communication are linked. In Doubt, the priest refuses to divulge information that should quell suspicions. The Sister, meanwhile, convinces herself despite zero evidence. Whom do you trust more, a priest or a nun? The father believes the sister has an agenda against him because he is “new school” and she is “old school.” The Sister believes the priest is having an inappropriate relationship with the new black student, yet doesn’t ask the student what happened. That sounds like a one-sided interpretation in favor of the father, I know, but the film does well to cast both characters in a light that makes appear good on their word, yet capable of sin.

Probably due to Doubt’s success on the stage, I enjoyed the film’s ability to refrain from making the film too filmy. Happily, there is quite a steady camera, no jumpy, quick cutting scenes that I recall, and certainly no exceptional photography or special effects. I also appreciated the film’s loyalty to some of the tropes we expect in plays. The backstage, not-so special-effects is what I’m referring to. The wind blows at all the right times, thunderstorms crash behind a heated argument. It works on screen, I think, because of the steady camera and static scenery. I was expecting, however, big drama, a scene of theatrical frenzy. My expectation was met with convention. Not flurry and frenzy, but pure, woe-begotten, cathartic melodrama. The confession feels much more for the audience than organic to the story, or naturally coming from characters. Question = Do you think of your fiction as having to separate resolutions? One for the reader and one for the characters.

The wails suspended my suspension of disbelief and the invocation of the title I believe is taboo in a scene of confession—even if the invocation is more thematic than revealing. The invocation of the title late in the story makes it cheesy. Doubt's resolution doesn’t tie the strings of the story together, it just places a factory-made, store-bought bow on the gift. Try it = invoke your piece’s title at the end, without being cheesy, of course.

I liked the lack of resolution. I didn’t need the bow. The most important thing we want to know: did he do it? did he not? We never find out. Maybe that bow was supposed to make us feel like we did.