Movie Review: Doubt (2008)

On Friday I watched most of the film Doubt from 2008.  I missed the last twenty minutes or so because I had to leave for 5:30 Mass, but I checked out the ending at Wikipedia.  The film stars Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn, Amy Adams as Sister James, and Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller.  The basic plot: in 1964, a black boy, Donald Miller, attends a Bronx parochial school where the student body is exclusively Irish and Italian (i.e. white).  Donald is taken under the wing of Father Flynn who is determined to help the boy survive.  However, doubt is cast on Father Flynn's motives in the minds of Sister Aloysius, the school principal, and Sister James, Donald's teacher.

All four of the lead actors are convincing in their roles.  I am always impressed with how Philip Seymour Hoffman has morphed from the weak George in Scent of a Woman and the manic Dusty in Twister to his mature roles in the last decade.  I never saw that coming.  Meryl Streep is always fine in her roles, though I admit I am not completely enamored with her like so many others.  Amy Adams as young Sister James and Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller, the mother of the boy, both did fine in their supporting roles.  The children who acted in the film were very believable.  I have no firsthand experience of teaching sisters and priests; I have read that some felt that Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman were not entirely convincing in their roles.  But I thought they did fine in that regard.

I enjoyed the location shooting.  The use of schools that evoked that time period really gave the film heft.  When certain films are trying to create an atmosphere, I think shooting in the autumn does a lot to help that effort and it shows in Doubt.  As events proceed in the film and the tension builds, several scenes involve the tilting of the camera so that the frame is not level.  This only adds to the tension, especially in the scenes with Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn.

Doubt came out about three years ago, so I am not going to hold back on the plot here.  If you haven't seen it and have read this far and don't want spoilers, don't read on.

The film is about suspicion and doubt on many levels.  Most obviously, Sister Aloysius suspects Father Flynn of abusing the black boy Donald Miller.  Sister sees things and has things reported to her by the young and naive Sister James that leads her to suspect, but she has no proof and Father Flynn when confronted adamantly denies any wrongdoing.  In the past when such issues came up, Sister Aloysius went through back channels to allies in the priesthood who handled the issue quietly, but in the case of Father Flynn, she has no one to whom she can turn with her suspicion.  In the end Father Flynn resigns and is reassigned; nothing is resolved.

On a deeper level, the movie examines the tide of change within the Church in 1964.  Vatican II is underway and Father Flynn and his attitudes represent that change to a kinder, friendlier Church.  Sister Aloysius represents the old ways that are now in doubt.  I wonder if the writer/director John Patrick Shanley realized the irony of Sister Aloysius when he was writing her given that she is determined to instill in her students and the sister-teachers under her the sense of hierarchy that she herself fights in dealing with Father Flynn.  Even the arrival of a black family in an Irish and Italian neighborhood foretells the upheavals that are to come with urban renewal and white flight to the suburbs.

Is the film anti-Catholic?  I wouldn't say so, no.  It certainly relies upon the Catholic milieu of the time and place in which it is set to tell its story and I can't fault it for that.  It tells a story well, its characters are not caricatures as far as I could tell.  I'll give it four out of five stars.

Movie Review: Sapporo Winter Olympics

Sapporo Winter Olympics (札幌オリンピック) (1972)
by Masahiro Shinoda

It's in the previous post, but I'll embed it here again for those who find this individual post through searching.



From the only review at Amazon.com, by a C. Weinstein of Los Angeles:

If this DVD represents the documentary "Sapporo Winter Olympics" by Masahiroo Shinoda, it is probably one of the best that came out of Japan in the 1970's. Extremely difficult to find on video, this film is as much about a meditation on discipline and on pure atmosphere as it is a coverage of the 1972 winter games. Each section has its own rhythm and flows effortlessly into subsequent scenes. Narration is almost completely absent for most of the film, the director preferring you to experience the feeling of cold weather that practically chills you from the screen and the determination on the part of many entrants gunning for a chance to make their mark.

If you like pure atmosphere in a film or are just looking for a good documentary about the 1972 Sapporo Olympics I highly recommend finding a copy of this.

The clip is all of three minutes and thirty-five seconds, but it is amazing how it captures all the points listed in Mr. Weinstein's review. It is absolutely atmospheric and a meditation. When I first watched it yesterday, I thought to myself at first that it was some kind of extremely stylistic film portraying fictional characters, starting with the opening shot showing the lone building against a bleak, empty sky and then moving on to the bird's-eye view of the skater alone on the ice and going from there. The katakana characters only added to the feeling of foreignness. Only during my reading of the commets at YouTube did I discover that the clip is from the documentary by the noted Japanese director.

The clip has that quality that so often is found in photos and films of that period that is hard to describe. It's detailed and focused, yet subdued. without the rich colors one today associates with digital film.

The action is simple, three different ladies skating around and judges judging the figures left behind. I think only a Japanese director, with his attention to nuance and unspoken expression, could capture with such detail the emotions evident. The first skater is calm, collected, disciplined and confident. The second skater is uncertain and hesitant. Shinoda captures this by showing both her facial expression and her posture before starting as she stands there before beginning her figure. The crowd looks nervous. She begins tentatively and looks wobbly. This is followed by close-ups of two of the judges, judging, watching, commenting as they examine everything.

Like I said, it's barely over three and a half minutes, but it is captivating. It reminded me immediately of Tarkovsky's Solaris, especially the prewiew shot of the second skater, standing there with her short blond hair. It looks surreal.

I need to find this documentary.