Monthly Archives: February 2009

Overall Rating: A
Filmmaking/Artisitic: A-
Storytelling: A+
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Overview

The best movie Your Movie Monkey has seen in at least 6 months, Doubt leaves you talking afterward, much as Memento did, about what actually happened.  Your Movie Monkey expected a bashing of the Catholic church due to their recent scandals.  The scandals somewhat set the scene, but the movie is complex and thought provoking, without taking sides (except, of course, that the needs of the kids in a particular Catholic school should outweigh the personalities and methods of the adults who are tasked with guiding them–of that, the movie leaves no doubt).

Full Review

As a teenager, Your Movie Monkey remembers seeing a story on 20/20 or 60 minutes or some similar show, about a priest who had dedicated his life to working with boys (troubled, if memory serves), and  who was accused of having inappropriate relationships.  The angle of the show was that the priest was very likely innocent, and at the time, YMM thought “how sad that this priest can’t have a heart for kids without being accused of something terrible”–specifically, at this tender age, YMM thought that the world was in general so self-centered that any act of selflessness was misunderstood and ascribed to sinister motives.

Your Movie Monkey believes he remembers the name of this priest from the show (although he will not publish it), because it was a priest who was later convicted of the crimes similar to those which had been described.

So what do we, as a society, do?  Ascribe every selfless motive as sinister?  Set up rules so stringent that the actual acts of service become exceedingly difficult to perform?  Doubt attempts to address this question, or at least, leave the viewer free to discuss it.

Meryl Streep plays a very strict nun who is the head of a catholic school in the 1960s.  She reports to a priest played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  The priest is young, and of a new tradition… a tradition more about meeting people’s needs where they live than a kind of blind adherence to rules.

An new, young, optimistic nun (Amy Adams) arrives, and is taught to be tough as nails by the head nun.  The new nun has a strange experience where a student of hers is called to the priest’s office, and comes back with a somewhat strange affect, and smelling of alcohol on his breath.  She also sees (later), the priest returning a t-shirt of the boy’s  to the boy’s locker.

That’s it.  That’s the facts.  The rest is conjecture.

The head nun suspects the priest of wrongdoing.  The priest of course denies it, but his method of denial (basically saying “I’m the preist, this doesn’t concern you”) of course doesn’t fly with her.  And what follows is exactly the world of contecture, the world of interpretation, and the world of the male-dominated catholic church.

So what does one do with little information?  Is the priest a misunderstood innocent, or a very clever liar?

It is because of the wrong doing of what is hopefully a minority in the priesthood that these questions must be asked.  How far does one go in the pursuit of the truth?  Is it ok to deceive, to accuse without evidence, to outright lie, in order to get there?  Doubt leaves these questions open.

The movie is very well acted (although Mery’s Streep’s accident changes a lot as the show goes on), and the characters are like those in Spike Lee movies, neither all good nor all bad.  The actress who played the mother of the boy had maybe 10 minutes of screentime, but those minutes were powerful.  She was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and deserved it.

Your Movie Monkey does not want to give too much away, so he will stop here.  He fully recommends Doubt for those old enough to understand the content.  For younger children who cannot understand the crime of which the priest is accused, it should probably be avoided.

Your Movie Monkey will close his review with his favorite commentary from the movie, a sermon given by the priest upon being accused by the head nun.

A woman confesses to her priest that she is guilty of the sin of gossip.  The priest tells her that, as penance, she should take her finest pillow to the top of her building, and cut it with a knife.  She complies, taking her very best pillow to her roof on a somewhat breezy day, and cuts it, with the mess of feathers floating all around.  She then returns to her priest who tells her that as the last bit of her penance, she should gather the feathers that had spilled, return them to the pillow, and sew it up.  The woman protested, noting that the feathers had by now spread on the winds to many different places, and that gathering them all together would be impossible.

“And that,” said the priest, “is gossip.”