OSCAR ROUND-UP 2009

“Doubt” is a chamber movie. It attempts to manufacture deep questions through a hothouse atmosphere of slow, carefully articulated dialogue, a minimum of scenes, sets and locations, and tightly wound brevity. It fails. But not for want of trying.

Set in the primarily white Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx in 1964, at a time of rapidly changing mores in the Church (post-Vatican II), society (the coming passage of the Civil Rights Act), and between the sexes, the film has the makings of greatness. First, there’s the presence of a screen legend (Meryl Streep), a legend-in-the-making (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a rising star (Amy Adams). These three satisfactorily work the mechanics of writer-director John Patrick Shanley’s nuanced script (he also wrote the stage play), but miss the deeper undertones.

As the progressive Father Flynn, Hoffman looks the part of a portly, likeable, and loving parish priest, whose heartfelt and pointedly honest sermons resonate with his parishioners (while sending veiled signals to the cloistered Sisters of Charity in the pews), and whose gently firm leadership inspires students at the St. Nicholas Catholic school, while raising “doubts” about his intentions.

The key to the Flynn character is its fuzziness. In fact, the key to the whole movie is “Doubt” about the purity of the priest’s motives. And Hoffman never delivers that ambiguity. He is one-dimensionally persuasive. We never suspect that in his attempts to shake up the rigid customs of the school he ever acted inappropriately towards his young male charges. In particular, we never believe that he molested a 12-year-old gay altar boy, and the school’s first and only black student, Donald Miller, who is quietly at the heart of the film’s core struggle, and whose mother (brilliantly played by Viola Davis) offers the film’s most fascinating moral paradigm.

What we need from Hoffman’s portrayal is a trace of creepiness. As anyone ever educated by Catholic priests can attest, a slight unease lurks beneath the church’s teaching of brotherly love, however well intentioned. Hoffman’s Flynn must leave us in suspense about his seeming altruism, even as we ascend to his refreshing view of morality, education, and doubt itself. Unfortunately, for all the hype about his stellar work in films such as “Boogie Nights” and “Capote,” it’s possible that Hoffman lacks the capacity to deliver this ambiguity.

Amy Adams is my favorite American female actor working today. The high-concept comedy “Wedding Crashers” and “Catch Me if You Can,” Spielberg’s tightest, least maudlin effort, demonstrated her range and genius. She is the natural choice here for the innocent, sensually vibrant, and bonneted Sister James. Of the three leads, she is the only one who shows genuine growth of character, as she moves from sweet, but easily manipulated, grade school teacher with a heart of gold, to a seasoned pro who deploys an assortment of tricks to maintain order in her classroom.

Sister James is the pivot point between the two antagonists: moving between the beguiling spiritual “love” of Flynn towards the real-world stoicism of Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Streep), the school’s principal. In a battle of the sexes with profound theological implications, Sister James is the virginal newcomer, the tabula rosa, the impartial moviegoer, whose good opinion is actively sought by the protagonists in the film’s, and, by extension, the church’s, critical power match-up. For it is the acquiescence of women in the Catholic Church’s corrupt patriarchy that enabled, and continues to enable, its continued ossification.

Adams visually registers the confusion she feels. She wants to be liked. She wants approval. And she wants to believe in a less cynical worldview, but she learns that her survival in the classroom and in the convent actively depends on doubting the intentions and explanations of others. The film’s ingenious conceit is in showing how she, and, by extension, all of us, mistakenly extrapolate from our own personal experience to the actions of others. At Sister Aloysius’ prodding, Sister James learns to see the dark side of her students. As she learns that things are not as they seem in her own classroom, she naturally concludes that Father Flynn might not be as he seems either, and that he, like her students, is fully capable (like all men?) of base deeds.

Though her epistemological struggle is universal, her half-baked internal resolution is secondary to that of the rule-bound disciplinarian, Sister Aloysius Beauvier, around whom the entire film turns. For it is Sister Aloysius’ un-halting doubt about the moral character of Father Flynn that threatens to upset the beautifully ordered Parkchester tableau. For Sister Aloysius has no empirical evidence, only hunch, upon which she draws her seemingly divine conclusions. She is like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor peering into the soul of Flynn, reading his self-revelatory sermons, seemingly innocuous actions (a reprimand, the returning of a student’s t-shirt, a gentle consoling arm around a young man’s shoulder), and conflicted protestations, as evidence of guilt. And, as such, she is not enforcing against action, but against the mere thought of wrong action. Buried deep within her motivational structure is suppression of desire in all its forms. Clearly traumatized by the loss of her husband, which might have led her to the nunnery, the sexually repressed, confused Aloysius, doubly repressed by the Church’s draconian patriarchy, is determined to snuff out any libertine deviation within the circumscribed sphere she can control (from smoking to alcohol to the singing of the pagan anthem, “Frosty the Snowman”).

I will not reveal “Doubt’s” denouement, but, given the potential for a transformative crescendo, the film’s resolution felt unsatisfactory. And this I place at the feet of the film’s main character. Frankly, Streep’s Aloysius is over-the-top. Her emotional expressions are puzzling, contradictory, and just plain weird. She seems to be over-acting under the guise of intense personal restraint, and, as a result, we “doubt” her believability.

For all the film’s missteps in pacing, casting, and leaden meteorological metaphors, it still could have rescued itself had the director taken a less reverential approach towards his superstar lead. Against the backdrop of the outrageous sexual scandals that would later rock the Catholic Church, we need to believe that the prudish Aloysius was at least prescient, if not always likeable. Alas, Streep is allowed too much room to maneuver and is, as a result, too clever by half in her presentation of the film’s core rhetorical dilemma: when is it appropriate to violate the norms of obedience and decorum in the interest of higher truth? And how does one, acting alone, through extrapolations from one’s faulty and all-too-human sense perceptions, arrive at definitive truth?

In an age increasingly at odds with critical thinking, with leaders who act more from faith and gut instinct than empirical proof, such questions take on added relevance. While “Doubt” has done us a service by raising these issues, it left this movie-goer playing a superficial game of “Did he or didn’t he?” instead of probing the far deeper question of “How do we know what we know?”