#7 – Doubt

The adaptation from stage to screen can be incredibly difficult. Though both mediums deal heavily with performances and dialogue, they are two completely separate and unique entities. Most playwrights seem not to understand this. John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” is one shining example of how to complete the transition.  Where the film is only 4 characters – a priest, a nun, the head nun and principal of a school, and a boy’s mother – the play includes both dialogue and plot points which involve the children; which involve the other nuns, and the community. It creates a world before our eyes that we instinctively create in our minds, when the story is on stage. The writing and acting also all happen to be brilliant (all 4 leads and the writing are Oscar nominated this year).

How do you know you know?

The story is a question: What did Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) do with Donald Miller? Was it innocent or sinful? If sinful, then sinful in what way and to what extent? Sister Aloysius is sure she has the answers to these questions, and she will stop at nothing until she gets the answer she knows already. But the film does not allow us to camp on Hoffman’s side, and chide the pious Sister Aloysius. We see Hoffman being kind and wonderful to his students, and we also see him acting suspiciously. Why doesn’t he have better answers? What shocked me about the film was that I had set my allegiances and then found over the course of the film, that they had shifted. Streep embodies her character with deep convictions, but not blind ones. She is human, and there are some key moments of hers that are staggeringly vulnerable. For me, the film was a renewal of faith in Streep. I know that she is good and great. But here is fresh, timely evidence that reminded me. That the film comes down perhaps too clearly on one side or the other may be its only flaw. I prefer the film to have answers for itself, but here is one case where its effectiveness almost hinges on not revealing that to us. Still, it hardly eliminates all complexity and mystery, and provides two of the year’s most dynamic scenes between Hoffman and Streep.