Movie Review: Doubt
by John NolteAs documented here, here, and here, through the portrayal of the sympathetic child molester, the onscreen hyper-sexualization of young girls, and child characters liberated through sexual behavior, for a number of years now the film industry has waged a drip-drip campaign in favor of the normalization of sex between adults and underage children. The offensive is a quiet, insidious one slowly slithering into the mainstream, and like all Leftist movements, will not stop until it gets what it wants.
The most recent drip on this wicked front comes from the well-reviewed Doubt, which might just earn an Oscar nomination for a “daring” use of nuance when it comes to what decent people call “the rape of a child.”
**MAJOR SPOILER COMING**
Other than Amy Adams‘ Sister James, who’s more simpering than sympathetic, Doubt gives us one truly sympathetic character and she’s a-okay with a grown man sexually abusing her twelve-year-old son. After being informed by Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) that her son is very likely the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the boy’s mother (Viola Davis) sees the glass half full. You see, the young man’s gay and therefore a social outcast beaten by his homophobic father, and so awful is all of this that maybe the best option left for him is at the hands of a sympathetic, forty-something, molesting predator.
To her credit Sister Aloysius is horrified, but Sister Aloysius is portrayed in the film as her own kind of monster. So our sympathies are quite obviously supposed to be with a working class black mother stuck in an abusive household desperate to do anything to help her boy.
The film’s defenders will call this turn of plot, complicated, nuanced, realism … anything but what it is, monstrous.
**END SPOILER**
On the stage, Doubt won both a Pulitzer and Tony for its Oscar-winning creator, John Patrick Shanley, who directs the film from his own adapted screenplay. “Doubt” is more than the title, it’s also the theme, which leads to a lot of inconclusiveness, hand-wringing, one good performance, overblown symbolism, and a silly ending meant to punctuate the theme but feels more like one of Sister Aloysius’s sharp whacks to back of the head.
The year is 1964 and since Father Flynn’s recent arrival at the Bronx Catholic high school a silent war of wills has been going on between this progressive priest and the traditional, more conservative school principal, Sister Aloysius. Whereas he believes the parish should be a part of the parishioner’s family, she prefers a disciplined distance and finds the slippery slope to sin in ballpoint pens and Frosty The Snowman.
It’s the era of desegregation and Donald Muller is the school’s first black child, and a lost soul for reasons more than having to do with skin color. As an altar boy, Donald finds a friend in the sympathetic Father Flynn but a series of small, questionable events create a suspicion between Sisters’ Aloysius and James that the relationship between Priest and altar boy might have taken an unhealthy turn. Up against an all male hierarchy and with only circumstantial evidence to back them up, it’s left to the two nuns to remedy the situation.The film does a good job shaking off its stage origins through the use of the Catholic school as a society unto itself. All gray skies and dirty brick buildings, the photography and production design are bleakly institutional, as are the characters. All carry pasty faces that jut from black clothing separated only by small, black eyes. This is a world without warmth and even less certainty.
Set amongst the details of Catholic ritual found in both the high school and the church, the first half of the story is weighed down only by Streep’s inability to grasp her character, specifically the New Yawk accent. This is Streep at her late-career worst, acting through affectation and look-at-me accents — anything other than then being natural. Thankfully, as the film moves into the nitty-gritty of the drama, she settles down and stops distracting with all that showy technique.
As always, Philip Seymour Hoffman is superb. There are so many shadings to his character that your opinion of whether he’s guilty or not will change many times over the course of just a single scene. Amy Adams is fine, if a little too wide-eyed, as the young nun unsure of everything and waiting for decisions to be made on her behalf.
There’s a couple of excellent scenes, especially the one where the Sisters first confront Flynn. But a heavy hand weighs over much of the rest. A wind blowing in as metaphor for change isn’t exactly original, and a light-bulb that burns out at a couple of opportune moments is too cute by half.
Laden with subtext referencing the daily headlines exposing the Catholic church’s disgraceful sexual abuse scandal from a few years ago, Doubt does those victims a disservice. All of us Catholics are tired of Hollywood taking shots, but where openhanded criticism is appropriate they balk, even at a clear condemnation of child molestation.
Film’s aren’t becoming more nuanced, they’re losing their humanity.
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27 Comments
Meryl Streep is in it? I’ll pass….yawn. Good write up though.
I’m not sure if we saw the same ‘Doubt’. The Doubt I viewed showed a traditionalist catholic woman at odds with an unnerving and sinister liberalism and budding heads with the patriarchal Catholic church hierarchy, and ‘winning’. A woman who stood her conservative ground and won. This was a brilliant conservative movie. Finally a conservative movie where the conservative is not the freak or degenerate. A conservative “little guy” fighting for right.
I’m not sure you understood the movie very well. The point is not that Viola Davis’ character is OK with her kid getting abused and we should be, too, it’s that poverty and oppression have pushed her to the point where she sees that as a logical conclusion. Shanley gives her such a good monologue because she’s arguing such an indefensible position. It’s also not clear that the Hoffman character did what he was accused of doing, HENCE THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE.
Hbemis, this was a conservative movie? Not my definition of conservative. It’s true that Shanley did a fairly clever job of reversing (liberal) expectations – the “good guy” is a cartoonish prude and the possible villain is a progressive humanitarian. But his whole point in doing that was not to confound liberals – it was to undermine moral judgments altogether. At the end of the movie, Sr. Aloysius has “doubts” and this is seen as a big breakthrough on her part – not her success in getting rid of Fr. Flynn (which is only a local success, since he gets promoted). She’s tough – the movie gives her that – but her evolution as a character is to be less sure of her judgments and, I would argue, of the validity of making moral judgments.
What on earth is supposed to be the message that we take from this movie/play? Fr. Flynn opens the movie by giving the most woolly sermon on how having doubts gives us a bond – beats me as to how or why this is a better bond than shared belief – but, that’s what he says. “At least we’re all in it together.” Okay, do we really want to take comfort about being “all in it together” with child molesters? Yes, they have humanity, but we damned well better pass a moral judgment on them before they molest the humanity of an innocent child.
The cheat of the screenplay was that the characters are making judgments based on very little information. It is surely wrong to judge someone, especially of a heinous crime, without as factual basis as possible. And, sometimes, in a case such as sexual abuse, we may not have the evidence to know for sure what was done. At that point, we may refrain from passing judgment on such a person, but we don’t “doubt” that child molestation is wrong, we don’t doubt that we should protect children, we don’t doubt that we need to investigate when we can. There’s nothing morally or metaphysically redeeming or virtuous about “doubt,” but the movie wants us to reach that conclusion. As bad as it is, as Nolte points out, that the movie has a sympathetic character ready to overlook sex abuse, “just til May,” but even worse, in my view, is that the movie wants to fundamentally undermine moral judgment. Everything, absolutely everything, is up for grabs, including altar boys.
And, by the way, I don’t know about you, but this is one conservative gal who thinks highly and with gratitude of the patriarchy and, in particular, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
I believe that the doubt Sister Aloysius holds at the end of the movie is not doubt as to her decision about Fr. Flynn. She is right when she says his resignation is his confession. Rather, her doubt is doubt in the Catholic Church brought on by Fr. Flynn’s promotion.
It is always dangerous to combine “children” with “underage” as those are two different categories. One is a metaphysical reality and the other is a legal line drawn by politicians. And today, by defining teens as “children” the State has begun waging a war on teens who are now incarcerated as ’sex offenders’ for a romp in the back of the Chevy. Surely this is Big Government run amok and it doesn’t help when social conservatives push this exaggerated hysteria which is then used to prop up massive intrusions into family life. These laws are removing parental power over their children and destroying family life. Because conservatives (and even some libertarians) promote this fear they are helping erect an edifice with immense powers over families. While so-called liberals are defined as “anti-family” surely the Big Government intrusion into family life is even more anti-family. And need I point out that if the plot were different, but with the same characters, this review would be very different. If the teenage boy in the film had committed a violent crime, and the family was claiming he was just a “mere child” the reviewer, I suspect would be shreiking that the teen be tried as an adult since “he knows better”. When it comes to sexual issues conservatives want teens seen as small childlren, when it comes to crime they want them seen as adult threats. Pick one side and stick to it.
I agree with HBemis, Screwtape and Paula. I saw the film they saw.
1) The film didn’t condemn or condone the mother. I was horrified by the mother, but I’m not a black mother in the 1960’s, so I can’t exactly judge her, can I? I believe that one of the main points with having the mother character was to show that this kid had nobody but a couple of nuns to stand up for him. That’s what I got out of it. Can we all agree that there are kids out in the world whose interests go unrepresented? It’s not a matter of judgment, but fact.
2) Some people see the ending as ambiguous. I don’t. If the preacher didn’t do it, I don’t think he would have given in to the nun. Afterall, it was backed up by a patriarchal system. I believe he did it and Streep had DOUBT at the end end of the film towards the church or, less likely, God.
3) It was definitley was not another cinematic liberal drip condoning sex between a child and adult. Why must it be viewed as one way or another? This was a kid in an incredibly screwed situation that set fourth an unfolding of events.
Delete apostrophe in last sentence.
wow! budding heads… were these heads coming out of a specific priest or just the patriarchal hierarchy in general? sounds like either porn or horror…maybe both.
CLS, it’s interesting that you bring up the matter of consistency, because I have long been baffled by the inconsistency in the thinking of those who are comfortable with both a mid-teen age of consent and an upper-teen age of accountability, but soften their stand on statutory rape when the difference between the ages of the victim and perpetrator is narrow. Either we believe that a young teen lacks the maturity to consent to sexual activity or we do not. Likewise, either we believe that an older teen lacks the maturity to be held accountable for his/her behavior or we do not. If we believe that the young teen is not mature enough to consent and we also believe that the older teen is mature enough to be fully accountable, it follows logically that sexual activity between a young teen and an older teen should be treated as statutory rape and the older teen should be prosecuted as an adult. If that doesn’t set well with you, the only solution is either to lower the age of consent or to raise the age of accountability. To borrow your own language, “pick one side and stick to it.”
I had my own doubts about this site at first, but, if this is the level of analysis and commentary we’re in for, I’m a big fan. It’s a good thing that there’s no place for ambiguity in art; if there was, how would we be able to know what was good and what was evil? Am I right?
With a film like this you have to ask: what would Jesus say about the Christian who would financially support a film about the rape of a 12 year old boy? Would He condone people who claim to believe in Him as Savior giving their money over to people who would make such a film?
As long as conservatives, and particularly religious conservatives, financially support films like this, we are NO DIFFERENT from liberals.
Ballsy for a film critic to start off by attacking Meryl Streep’s acting technique. Wrong, but ballsy.
Her accent was dead on. I had eight years of the Sisters of Charity in New York back in the day. Streep’s Sister Aloysius was perfect. And before you whisper otherwise, remember: she can see your reflection in Pius XII’s eyes!
As for Sister Aloysius being a monster, not compared with the Charitys who left their paw prints on the faces of my classmates. Besides, she was right: the fountain pens gave way to the cartridges, and thence to the facile, effortless ballpoints that surely paved the slippery slope to texting and twittering.
Now trim those nails!
Loved the play, loved the film. The ambiguity makes it an audience participation mystery. You see the film you want to see. Here, for once, it’s just possible that the old school nun was right and the liberal, post-Vatican II priest was being a very naughty boy. So HBEMIS’ take rings true for me.
Joe: I don’t disagree with you from what I can see. I tend to think that the age of consent and age of criminal responsibility ought to be the same, whatever it is. I don’t think that we ought to treat adolescent sexuality as a crime — that is asking for trouble. I estimate, based on the reports by teens of their own sexual activities, that somewhere around half the teenage population in the country is qualified for “sex offender” status. When the laws become so broad as to do that then the laws have stopped protecting young people and become their adversary. We can’t let government power get that big and that intrusive without do severe damage to parental rights and to the family.
By the way, from the reviews I’ve read, and several in-depth reports on the play on which the film is based, I was under the impression that what is not clear is whether any actual sexual activity took place. I do intend to see the film to clarify that. One important measure in free society is the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”. That is one of the most important restrictions on government power around because it is absolutely necessary to protect individual rights from unwarranted or unproven charges. The purpose of such laws are not to protect the “guilty” but to protect the innocent. And the history of the radical feminist inspired hysteria has shown that thousands of innocent people have been jailed and tens of thousands of families have been ripped apart by the abuse sniffers. When this started with bogus cases like McMartin Day Care many conservatives noted how these false charges were harmful to families and diverted investigatory resources from legitimate abuse cases to phony ones. But ever since the Religious Right joined the radical feminists a lot of mainstream conservatives have been afraid to criticize the ongoing hysteria and the Big Government types have used that to expand state power.
A 12 year old boy???
CLS: that would be a CHILD!!!
Disgusting – make me puke. I think I’ll save my $10.
I can’t muster an iota of interest in seeing this film. I must be way outside the demographics used by hollywood. Way way outside.
Wow. This really is the problem with a website devoted to a conservative view of film. You end up reaching to find fault while hewing to a line, and you end up right at about the level of The Catholic Standard. The film is a taut, interesting battle between traditional conservatism and social liberalism that touches on education, sexuality and faith, and in the end, the conservative position not only scores points, but wins.
And all you see, because perhaps you must, is sanctioned pedophilia.
A very rough start.
Sister Aloysius: “Because you smile at hims and sympathize with him and talk to him as if you were the same?”
Flynn: “That child needed a friend.”
Sister Aloysius: “You are a cheat. The warm feeling you experienced when that boy looked at you with trust is not the sensation of virtue. It can be got from the drunkard from his tot of rum . . .
Flynn: “Where’s your compassion?”
Sister Aloysius: “Nowhere you can get at it . . . ”
That’s an exchange speaking way beyond the issue of “did he or didn’t he?”
I refuse to see this movie because quite frankly I see it a yet another attack by liberals on my church. I understand that there was a priest accused of sexually molesting a child. One priest amoung how many? Yet this one act coming to light has been the catalyst to paint every priest as such, to try and belittle the vows of chastity taken by catholic clergy as somehow abnormal and to belittle catholicism.
Liberals don’t like what catholisism preaches so our faith is attacked. And quite frankly I have met some atheistic liberal jews that for what ever reason hate catholics. I don’t know why and thankfully it is not the majority of jewish people but there is an element of far left jewish people that I have come to believe are anti-catholic bigots. I have no real understanding as to why?
I think the point of this movie is to yet again try to use this as a philosophical bludgeon against the church.
Ported over from the old ‘DHP’ stomping grounds –
Perhaps it’s my pulp aesthetics, but I’ve always held a belief, somewhat corrolary to a statement of Raymond Chandler’s –
Whenever a story spends more than one scene on hand-wringing doubt, self-questioning, and the idea of never being able to make a value judgement, a platoon of Nazis should burst in the door, guns blazing.
With that in mind, MY ending would involve Sister Wooden and Sister Hot finding out that Father O’Molester is not, in fact, a molester, but part of the Secret Monster-Hunting Order within the church, and has been spending time with Little Timmy Victim in order to determine whether or not, in fact, his parents are raising him to be the Antichrist. Sister Wooden is willing to believe this, as we find that the reason she’s such a stick-in-the-mud is because, as a young woman, she was seduced by Beelzebub on Lammastide, and despite trying to have a back-room abortion, the horrid thing still lived, and crawled off into the night. After this, Sister Wooden joined the nunnery. Anyway, back in the present, she and Father O’Molester decide to join forces. Investigating the Victim family, we find that Timmy’s father has the blood of the Deep Ones in him, and is beginning to go through his Batrachian metamorphosis into a webbed, gilled horror of the seas. Finding out that his son prefers weiners to tacos was the last straw – Father Dagon and Mother Hydra want Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, worshipping them. Sister Wooden and Father O’Molester club Mister Victim on the head, grab up little Timmy, and head back to the church.
But then, in a surprise twist, we find that Sister Hot was, in fact, manipulating everyone all along. She directed Wooden and O’Molester’s attention to Timmy Victim, in order to hide the TRUE antichrist lurking in the Bronx – her! For she is, in fact, the horrid spawn of Sister Wooden and the Devil on The Hill! She morphs into her even-hotter succubus form, as the hordes of darkness begin to rise up from cracks opening up in the ground. In a desperate attempt to stop them, Father O’Molester begins chanting from the Forbidden Tome of Lore, calling out to the Dark Star Fomalhaut, and summoning forth Cthugha, Lord of Flame and Light, who comes down from the sky to earth with his full court of Fire Vampires, destroying the entire church and school in a great fiery conflagration. When all is done, there is nothing but a smoldering crater, a single white-hot crucifix, and an unconscious, gay, Deep One child.
THERE’S your Oscar-winning ending!
Your assessment of the decisions made by the mother of the terribly put-upon boy is uncharitable and off base. This strong and wise woman clearly steered in the best possible direction given the harrowing circumstances of her son’s life and the unhinged nature of the vague accusations she’s asked to accept. No doubt.
VINCENT “I was horrified by the mother, but I’m not a black mother in the 1960’s, so I can’t exactly judge her, can I?”
In fact you can. It’s called having empathy to put yourself in her situation, and believing in objective truths of right and wrong to judge her actions. If you’re in the “I can’t just anyone else crowd” it’s the same as ‘whatever I feel is right is right’.
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