So, I went to see Doubt on Saturday afternoon.
- I’m having a problem where Meryl Streep is always good that I can’t actually tell when she is really good. I liked her in this, but I don’t feel wowed by her in this. She attempts a Bronx (or other related borough) accent about 50% of the time; this accent did not come across at all in the trailer so it was surprising to hear it come across in the movie. I like her as a villain, but that said they did a good job of preventing Sister Aloysius from becoming a monster. She was stern and unyielding but she was not without sympathy for others (e.g. helping the one nun who was going blind) or unreasonable (e.g. allowing a secular song to be included in the Christmas pageant against her own preferences).
- Speaking of which, the greatest line of the movie came after Amy Adams’ character, Sister James, approaches Sister Aloysius to tell her she no longer believes the priest is guilty. Sister Aloysius is not convinced and says she’s totally going to take the priest down anyway. Sister James, wide eyed and innocent, says “You don’t like him because he likes Frosty the Snowman!” LOL. Sister Aloysius is a woman after my own heart for I too hate Frosty.
- I feel like Philip Seymour Hoffman has done well for himself despite not fitting any standard definition of “Hollywood leading man”.
- The problem with the word “rectory” is that it sounds way too much like “rectum” and thus all the jokes around priests and altar boys in the rectory tell themselves. “Father Flynn called Donald Miller to the rectory!!” Oh really?
- I feel like this movie wants to make you find it difficult to pick sides, to find ambiguity and confusion in the presented evidence, to find your own doubt in what you’re seeing and what conclusions you draw from it, but I felt like the Priest’s guilt seemed fairly self-evident, despite the melodramatic ending. (But maybe I’m just really judgemental?) None of his story seems to add up terribly well and his “talk” with Sister James to convince her of his innocence is incredibly calculating and designed to exonerate himself in her eyes without offering any real evidence. There’s very little actual evidence against him, which is exactly what leads to all the ambiguity and doubt, but I feel like it’s very easy to take a “guilty until proven innocent” stance on this one (especially since the characters are fictional).
- Also, these nuns are really bad detectives. Sister James says that when Donald Miller, the boy in question, returned from his private meeting with Father Flynn in the rectory (hahaha), the boy seemed upset, was acting peculiar, and she could smell alcohol on his breath. Father Flynn explains this away by saying he wanted to talk to Donald private about how Donald was caught by a third party drinking the communion wine, a crime that could get Donald kicked off the Altar Boy Communion Squad™ if word got out, so he was hoping to talk some sense into the kid so he could stay an altar boy. This explanation satisfies both nuns, causing Sister James to disbelieve his guilt and causing Sister Aloysius to look harder for proof of his guilt now that he seems to have exonerated himself in this situation.
Except for the part where it doesn’t. If Father Flynn was calling the kid to the rectory (hahaha) to have a chat about previously being caught drinking the communion wine, why on earth would he return to class with alcohol on his breath if he hadn’t been plied with more wine by the priest? Come on now, ladies.
- I like movie Catholicism. I also like that Father Flynn is attempting to modernize their school and their church, while Sister Aloysius is staunchly old school. The movie takes place around Christmas in 1964, so Vatican Council II and its changes were just around the corner. I’m sure 1964 was picked as the setting for this story in the play largely for this reason.
- I found it incredibly unrealistic that Donald’s mother would be okay with her son being theoretically abused by the priest for a further six months simply so he could get into a better high school. Evidently she puts up with her husband’s abuse of both herself and her son at home, so maybe she’s normalized what may or may not be happening to her son, but if someone said to me “Oh hey, the priest may be ‘interfering’ with your kid,” my first response would not have been “Okay, well, he needs to suck it up until June because St. Nicholas will look better on his high school applications than St. Brutus’ Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys”. Like… what? Sister Aloysius may have a vendetta against Father Flynn, but it’s clear she is indeed concerned about Donald’s welfare because she finds this response completely appalling.
- The one major problem with this movie is how it ends and it ends so terribly that it’s possible it could ruin the movie for some people. Sister Aloysius successfully gets Father Flynn deposed from her school and the church, only he gets rewarded by the Bishop and is given a position at swanky St. Jerome, which is apparently the crown jewel of parishes in that particular archdiocese. In the final scene, we see Sister Aloysius sitting alone on a bench outside the school clearly musing on what has transpired at her school. Sister James comes over to chat and Sister Aloysius gives her the Where Are They Now™ update on Father Flynn before bursting into tears and wailing “I HAVE DOUBTS!!!” End scene.
Um. No. For real? It should be a tragic moment for the movie to end on: Sister Aloysius should be basking in her triumph and instead she is mentally berating herself for what she’s done to Father Flynn, both professionally and personally, because she acted with only her certainty as her proof. Instead, it’s just incredibly cheesy and hysterical and mostly unbelievable. There’s no sense that Sister Aloysius ever had any doubt at any other point — we’re led to believe she’s had her suspicions long before being approached by Sister James with her accusation — and so this complete about face should be shocking and horrifying, not humorous. It’s upsetting how funny it was. I couldn’t believe it actually happened.
Edit: Evidently I’m wrong on this interpretation, but I stand firm in believing it’s a poorly delivered line that doesn’t nearly convey what it should.
In response to your last paragraph, I did not take the “doubt” Sister Aloysius feels at the end to be about Father Flynn’s guilt at all; she makes that clear when she says that his confession was his resignation. She remains absolutely certain — even if he didn’t actually cross the line physically — that he takes liberties in his own thoughts and in respecting adult/child boundaries (especially when a child might be disposed to welcome it) and so is potentially untrustworthy. Her ultimate doubt is much bigger than this: it is about (a) her commitment to an institution that would allow potential opportunism of this nature to not only go uninvestigated (remember that the monseigneur dismissed her concerns out of hand without any investigation), but in fact be rewarded with promotion within its hierarchy; or (b) taking it one step further, whether there is a god at all. In short, she is questioning the entire system of organized religion at the very least, and perhaps even the existence of a god who would be the “head” of a system so open to abuse. It seemed immediately obvious to me that the entire goal of the story was to bring that question to light. So, in my opinion, the “about-face” you mention was nothing of the kind, but instead just the logical conclusion of a thinking mind whose foundation of religious faith has been rocked by a cataclysmic realization.
Even if that’s the case (and perhaps it is, I can’t even remember that scene that clearly at this point), the way the final line is expressed is still so over the top that it’s hard to take seriously. No matter what the moral or intent, unless it was meant comedically it missed it’s mark.
Sister Aloysius had no doubts about Flynn. Her doubts were about having served a church that could have allowed a Flynn and other “Flynns” to exist, unchecked, in the church. He even gets a promotion! I have no”doubts”about this.
I went to St Jeromes in Brooklyn and the nun in
charge of close to 100 first graders was, I believe, Sister Mary Aloysius.
She was actually much better looking than Meryl
Streep, and had the look of the younger Sister James
as did most of the nuns after WWII.
It caused me to think that the playwright was
in that class or subsequent classes with that
nun, but I “doubt” it.
Was Father Flynn a good priest? Yes. Was Sister
Aloysius a good principal? Yes. Her projected
sense of certainty was necessary as a counter
to the idea that priests were to be deferred to.
The scenes where Flynn presumes to be treated
like a little king were typical. He considered
himself part of an unspoken ruling class of
priests where nuns were concerned. It was
like a running battle which he lost, but
which battle did he lose, that’s the question?