"Doubt, A Parable" Movie Review

The most recent in an increasingly sporadic series of movie reviews by me.

What a great movie! It makes me wish I had seen the play when it was recently presented at Neptune Theatre. There are some spoiler alerts throughout this post, so be warned if you want to see this movie, you should save reading this until after you have watched the film.

Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, two actors with great skills, play the lead characters. Amy Adams takes on a much more serious role than her typical female sidekick in a Will Ferrell movie, and Viola Davis had a brief but very moving appearance as the mother of the student who is in the centre of the story's central conflict.

The scene between Davis and Streep was more compelling to me than the climactic scene between Hoffman and Streep. There is so much going on during the few minutes between the two women, the dialogue is full of meaning and I personally found it to be the best scene of the movie.

Davis' character is one of four in the original play. She made the most of it in this scene. Oscars should be given for quality, not quantity. I agree with the nomination. Check out lists of other awards, all four actors were nominated for just about everything, as was the screenplay. In my opinion, they all did a great job.

The story has many examples of symbolism:

Bloody noses for one of the boys and one of the nuns. A bloody nose is a sign of upcoming danger or disaster. It happened to both the children and the church.

Names! Aloysius is the patron saint of students. Sister Aloysius was acting out of her concern for the welfare of the students.

Sister James, named for the first of the 12 Apostles to be martyred. Sister James represents innocence, which is the first trait to go when one leaves childhood. The central conflict of the movie would definitely make one grow up prematurely.

Veronica, the name can be broken down to vera (true) and icon (image), representing the old church that was being left behind with the wind of change of the 1960's, the winds being present throughout the movie. Veronica is the "old" church, with her blindness and age, being hindered by her habit (more than one sense of the word is applicable here).

**SPOILER ALERT** The dinner scene contrasting the priests having rare meat and wine, joking and carrying on while the nuns quietly ate their meal, showed that Father Flynn was in the old boys club, so we shouldn't have been totally surprised when he gets promoted by these same men. The scene when Flynn tells Aloysius that she was supposed to talk with the pastor, not a nun, from Flynn's former parish reinforces this message of old boys club. The point of the meat was that it was completely rare, showing once again that Flynn was all about fulfilling his physical desires.

Their titles of father and sister should tell us everything about the pecking order. All priests were called father, even new priests like Flynn (5 years) were superior to all nuns, even senior nuns like Aloysius, who was a Mother Superior. Priests were autonomous, nuns were subservient. That is what this scene shows us.

Father Flynn had long, well-kept fingernails. Long fingernails are a sign of femininity. Maybe how he showed them off to the boys in gym class was an advertisement, to see which of the boys would find them attractive? Flynn's repeating of the importance of keeping one's nails clean reminds me of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28, when Jesus called the Pharisees and the scribes a bunch of hypocrites:

"25 What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy - full of greed and self-indulgence! 26 You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish,[a] and then the outside will become clean, too. 27 What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs-beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. 28 Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Flynn kept his nails "his cup" clean, when he was filthy inside. I think these verses speak volumes to the message of this movie, the hypocrisy of the church leaders who promoted Flynn and the injustice or lawlessness of that promotion.

Flynn's long and clean fingernails were one of his "vanities". Vanity is a version of pride, which is the greatest sin of all. The nuns chastised the female student (named "Horan"!) about a barrette in her hair - a simple adornment that they saw as a gateway to sexual immorality, which is later symbolically fulfilled with her proclaiming love for a boy.

Also, Flynn's smoking was another flaunting of the rules - he let his physical temptations get the better of him in a number of ways, knowing he was breaking the rules of the church and of God. His pride led to all sorts of sin, including his sins with boys at each of his parishes.

The scene where he smokes in front of Sister James, thereby bringing her in as an accomplice to his infraction of smoking as well as her belief in his innocence, was very well done by the actors and the writer.

**SPOILER ALERT** Sister Aloysius' doubts were in how the church leaders could let someone like Father Flynn be in charge of children when he was tempted by them. Her doubt may also have been to the point of questioning why God would allow such a thing to happen to other children even though she, as the bride of the church, had found him out. I figure it is a literary example of Sister Aloysius being a flawed hero: her lie to trap Father Flynn made her crusade impure, so it backfired.

Bottom line: Excellent acting performances of a very well-written (largely autobiographical) script, expertly directed by the playwright, worthy of the Pulitzer and Tony awards and many other nominations and awards it received.