Doubt (Shanley, 2008)
At the end of a series of interviews on the DVD for Doubt, writer/director John Patrick Shanley explains what he was trying to do in his play and its film adaptation. It is one of the most dramatic examples I can remember of a writer unintentionally laying bare the central weakness of his own script. That Shanley apparently doesn’t see it as such makes it all the more depressing.
He says: “My hope is that you’ll get caught up in the mystery aspect of it, and then at a certain point transcend that and go, ‘You know, I’ve become more interested in other things.'” Lest there be any confusion about what he means by “the mystery aspect of it,” he immediately clarifies that what he wishes the viewer to “transcend” is the question of “whether this person is guilty or innocent.”
“This person,” is Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the crime that he may be “guilty or innocent” of is molesting Donald Miller, the first African-American student at a 1960s Catholic school modeled after Shanley’s own childhood educational venue. What “other things” Shanley hopes the viewer will be more interested in is less clearly articulated in his interview or in the film than one would hope.
Given that the title of the film is Doubt, I will give the writer the benefit of my own doubts and assume that he actually believes what he says here and is not simply a victim of his own nebulous plotting. Doubt plays out as a battle for the hearts, if not the souls and bodies, of the students and colleagues at the school. Flynn’s antagonist is Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), and her uncompromising rigidity is supposed to connote a degree of self-righteousness that is nearly impossible to like or respect even if one thinks, as I do, that she is the only one in the film who is at least trying to act like a morally responsible person, whether her motives be pure or not.
For a film that wants to insist that there are moral shades of gray, Doubt has precious little nuance in the way it presents these antagonists. Sister Aloysius pulls on the boys’ ears, gives draconian penalties for minor offenses, makes her fellow nuns eat in silence until she rings a bell, and demands they answer her questions on command. Flynn gives his protege a small gift after mass and a hug that lingers a bit too long when he is bullied. He tells Sister James (Amy Adams) that love is the natural response to a child. They are stick figures representing kindness and sternness, not human beings who exhibit those qualities as expressions of character.
The characterizations being so exaggerated would not be an issue were this a story about personality. It passes itself off, though, as a film about the evils of making judgements based on personality. Sister James (rightly) points out that Aloysius doesn’t like Flynn because he uses a ball point pen and prefers “Frosty the Snowman” to church hymns. I don’t think one needs to be Roman Catholic to understand these are symbols of modernization and, hence, the Second Vatican Council. Even the more recent film Conclave — hardly a nuanced portrayal of church politics — is intricate by comparison. Progress is bad say the traditionalists, better to keep the church the way it is. But…the way things are includes abuses and power imbalances that could destroy lives. I’m not Catholic, but … come on, does anyone (besides Shanley?) think that the issues like in what language mass is spoken are in the same orbit as whether or not anything justifies the sexual abuse of children?
In the middle of the film, Flynn, who finds himself under suspicion, gives a sermon about gossip. (His sermons sound very Protestant in style and don’t appear to be tied at all to a Church calendar or liturgy, but I digress.) In it, he has an affable priest deny a penitent gossiper absolution for the sin of gossip, while highlighting the damage it does through a story that Roger Deakins (the best cinematographer walking the planet) films with poetic power and glory. It is worth noting that film never explores the consequences of sexual abuse with anything approaching the same passion. This consideration is swept away by Donald’s mother (Viola Davis) who opines that whatever else Father Flynn might be doing, he is paying attention to her son, and her son is better off for it. So he might not be abusing children, but, hey, even if he is, that’s not as destructive a sin as gossip.
A lot could be written about Sister Aloysius’s final line, I suppose. Given the film is seventeen years-old, that line is hardly a spoiler, but I’ll refrain from repeating it here for those in the future who may be coming upon the film for the first time. I think it is meant to be a jaw-dropping twist that makes us reexamine everything that has gone before, but…it just doesn’t land. Even if it did, the film has lost its soul by that point.
He is either innocent or guilty. I can respect a film that says we don’t always get to know the answer. But I can’t respect a film, however well shot and acted, that says the answer hardly matters.
