John Patrick Shanley’s seminal play ‘Doubt’ has finally been adapted for the big screen by the playwright himself. While several critics have taken Shanley to task (unfairly) for his adaptation and direction, I’m here to tell you that ‘Doubt’ is without doubt one of this year’s finest film experiences. Everything that was brilliant and relevant with the off-Broadway debut of ‘Doubt’ in 2004 is still as vital and electric as the stage production.

When your source material has won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award, the Drama Desk, the Tony and the Pulitzer, it’s very hard to imagine it not making a successful transition to the big screen. In the hands of the man who created the bristling dialog and layered moral constructs of the drama’s carcass, it would seem virtually indestructable. Yet, Shanley has taken some risks. Transfering a dramatic piece specifically created for the stage to the open-ended world of film is a trickier task than some give Shanley credit for.

To that end, and with the expert eye of Director of Photography Roger Deakins, Shanley has infused the film version of his play with a dazzling use of color and the elements of Mother Nature. Nowhere is that dramatic intent as poignantly visible as during the “pillow sermon” which is later echoed by the stunning confrontation of Sister Aloysius and Mrs. Miller (more on that in a bit) and a whirl of autumn leaves. Scenes bookended with streaming sunlight, pitch blackness, pouring rain, splashes of unexpected color, open windows, drawn blinds–all serve as flawless and metaphoric punctuation to the performances of the actors and the exposition of the story.

At its very core, ‘Doubt’ is a story with not-so-pat answers to questions that have shadowed man from his creation. When is one man’s truth more correct than another? When do one’s beliefs and guiding principles blind us from the truths in front of us? Can truth ultimately be more dangerous than what one’s mind can concoct? These are but few of the questions that Shanley and ‘Doubt’ challenge us with. So when the first black student is accepted into St. Nicholas in the Bronx, a duel between Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) is sparked when the priest takes a special interest in Donald Miller’s education–an interest Sister Beauvier fears is unhealthy and inappropriate.

The moral dilemma is set into motion when a hapless innocent, Sister James (Amy Adams), hears and sees too much–or has she? Not quite sure of what to make of the situation, she naturally turns to Sister Aloysius for guidance. What results is a showdown between these three characters and their truths over young Donald Miller. While the obvious issues raised–including racism, homosexuality, pedophilia, religious dogma, religious hierarchy and politics–all provide jumping off points for the drama and the catharsis to follow, the real jolt to the system comes with the appearance of Donald Miller’s mother at the behest of Sister Aloysius.

In one superbly shot and brilliantly acted scene, Viola Davis (who appears only once in the film) gives a tour de force performance that will be talked about for ages. Not only does Davis bring an unexpected humanity and vulnerability to her character, but she basically upends the seeming conclusion the pathos was driving for with a bombshell revelation. So vital and heartwrenching is this scene, that it will literally take the audience aback and make them rethink any preconceived notions they may have fostered of our main players. In many ways, Mrs. Miller proves to be the one vulnerability in Sister Aloysius’ steely armor of truths. Viola Davis not only deserves an Academy-Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, she deserves the prize with this unforgettable performance. (At a later date, I want to revisit the mechanics of this scene–and their consequences.)

To say that ‘Doubt’ is loaded with a talented cast is perhaps the understatement of the year. The indescribably brilliant Meryl Streep gives an assured and haunting performance as Sister Aloysius. Watching Streep’s eyes dart and chin tighten as she passes Sister Aloysius’ judgements is a study in acting on its own. She inhabits this character with such fervor and committment, it’s quite easy to forget that she is Meryl Streep, actress. Ms. Streep will rightly collect her fifteenth Oscar nomation. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s turn as Father Flynn is much more nuanced than Streep’s. His character is painted in broad strokes with careful shading (unlike Sister Aloysius). Hoffman’s Flynn is at his best when he’s locked one-on-one with Streep’s Beauvier. These scenes crackle with an intensity that literally makes your heart race faster. Amy Adams’ Sister James is the buffer to Flynn and Beauvier’s battle. She brings an innocence that is deeply needed in the murky clouds of suspicion. Together, with Ms. Davis, the quartet are assuredly the best film ensemble of the year.

‘Doubt’ will affect you on a very deep and personal level if you allow it to. There are no easy answers–and the questions themselves may be wrong. As a morality play, ‘Doubt’ is brilliant in its set-up and execution. It asks you to examine your truths and question your doubts. Neither Shanley nor the film answer the audience’s questions–and in doing so create the ultimate questions about faith and fate.

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SYNOPSIS:

John Patrick Shanley brings his play DOUBT to the screen, in a story about the
quest for truth, the forces of change, and the devastating consequences of blind justice in an age defined by moral conviction.

It’s 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A vibrant, charismatic priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is trying to upend the school’s strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline. The winds of political change are sweeping through the community, and, indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student, Donald Miller. But when Sister James (Amy Adams), a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her guilt-inducing suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius is galvanized to begin a crusade to both unearth the truth and expunge Flynn from the school. Now, without a shred of proof or evidence except her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn, a battle that threatens to tear apart the church and school with devastating consequences.

DOUBT was written for the screen and directed by John Patrick Shanley. The film stars Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. The film is produced by Scott Rudin and Mark Roybal, with Celia Costas as Executive Producer. Director of Photography is Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; Production Designer is David Gropman; Editor is Dylan Tichenor, ACE; Costume Designer is Ann Roth; Music is by Howard Shore; Casting is by Ellen Chenoweth; Sound Mixing is by Danny Michael, CAS, Lee Dichter, CAS and Ron Bochar, CAS; Sound Editing is by Ron Bochar.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:

From the opening moments of John Patrick Shanley’s DOUBT to its powerful conclusion, uncertainty hangs in the air, drawing the audience into a provocative mystery in which two nuns, a priest, and the mother of a young boy – as well as the audience itself — are forced to confront their core beliefs as they struggle with judgment and verdict, conviction and doubt. In the battle of wills that ensues, DOUBT raises probing questions about the challenges of navigating a world increasingly confronted by sweeping changes and moral dilemmas.

It was the very word “doubt” that first inspired Shanley to write what would become the most acclaimed play of the last decade, and now, to adapt the story into a screenplay that enlarges the play’s world and uses the fluidity of cinema to plant new seeds of uncertainty. At the time he began writing, Shanley recalls vast numbers of polarized political pundits literally shouting at each other on television. “I felt surrounded by a society that seemed very certain about a lot of things. Everyone had a very entrenched opinion, but there was no real exchange, and if someone were to say ‘I don’t know,’ it was as if they would be put to death in the media coliseum. There was this mask of certainty in our society that I saw hardening to the point that it was developing a crack – and that crack was doubt,” Shanley explains.

“So I decided to write a play that celebrated the fact that you can never know anything for certain. I wanted to explore the idea that doubt has an infinite nature, that it allows for growth and change, whereas certainty is a dead-end. Where there is certainty, the conversation is over, and I’m interested in the conversation, especially because another word for that conversation is ‘life.’ We’ve got to learn to live with a measure of uncertainty. That’s the silence under the chatter of our time.”

For Shanley, the overriding challenge was incorporating not just the theme but also the very mechanism of doubt into the fabric of his story, unraveling facts and truths the audience might think are clear at the outset, and leaving the audience finally to explore these loose ends in their own way. Throughout, Shanley’s one incontrovertible dictum was to never lead the audience to any one individual conclusion. “What was always important to me,” he explains, “is that the sense of doubt belongs to the audience. I’m not going to tell them what’s right and wrong. I wanted to simply make them think and feel something, rather than tell them what to think and feel.”

Once Shanley knew he wanted to write about doubt and the necessity of weathering the inevitable challenges to one’s beliefs, he began to ponder the setting for such a tale. “I wanted to apply the way I see things to a situation that was very fraught and seemingly insoluble,” he says, “and this led to a parish priest accused of taking advantage of a member of his flock. I wasn’t interested in the church scandals themselves, but I was looking for a polarizing situation, one in which most people would brook no hesitation in condemning a person – and then throwing those assumptions back at the audience in a different light.”

Having decided on setting the story’s battleground issues of principle and compassion in a religious school, Shanley’s play took on a rich personal depth, transporting him back to his own childhood growing up in a strict Catholic school in a predominantly Irish Catholic workingclass Bronx neighborhood. “I knew those people,” he says. “Sister Aloysius is certainly based on nuns I experienced firsthand, and she is also someone I relate to – there is a certain sadness I share with her about things that are gone now from the world, like silence and ball point pens and students reading Plato.”

Drawing further on his resonant memories, Shanley set the clash between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn against the volatile atmosphere of 1964, just after the Kennedy assassination and on the cusp of the civil rights movement of the late 60s. “That was a pivotal time of going from complete faith in establishments and hierarchies, to questioning those establishments and hierarchies — like the military, and organized religion,” he says.

It was also a time of sweeping changes for the Catholic Church. The establishment of Vatican II by Pope John XXIII in 1962 ushered in a series of considerable reforms designed to make the church more modern, more diverse and more accessible to a changing laity. By the mid-‘60s, the face of the church would be quite different, with nuns no longer required to wear the habit and with much less formality between priests and their parishioners.

“I wanted to capture something about that lost moment,” says Shanley. “Walking around the Bronx in 1964, you’d see nuns in their bonnets and habits, but you didn’t realize that within just a few years, they wouldn’t be wearing them anymore and that time would be gone forever. I also think that Father Flynn is very much a product of the early ‘60s in the way he is questioning institutions as they stand, while still working within the system. He wants to make the church that he loves viable in a changing world.”

Race, too, was woven into the story through the character of Donald Miller, the black child whose unusually close relationship with Father Flynn spurs Sister Aloysius’ crusade. Shanley has vivid memories of attending a school with just a single black student in the early, tension-filled days of school integration. “When you have only one black student in school, you really start to notice that person and think, what does it feel like to be that guy? It made me see myself and my social context in a more complex way and made me start to question those things on a deeper level,” he comments.

Throughout, Shanley avoided taking sides with any of his characters – and he admits that he relates to elements of both Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius. “I have a tendency to agree with every one of my characters while they are talking,” he confesses. “But that’s my experience of life. Human beings are contradictory and paradoxical and mysterious, and they remain that way.”

All of this builds to the story’s crucible moment, when Sister Aloysius finally admits she herself has – for the first time – doubts. Her certainty has been eroded by her growing compassion and even empathy for Donald Miller, his mother, the other students, and Sister James. She finds community in doubt, and thus is humanized and changed. The audience is left to reconcile what they just experienced in terms of their own beliefs and emotions. This was essential to Shanley’s vision for Doubt.

He says: “For more than a hundred years, filmmakers have tended to ask a question and at the end of the movie, they answer it. With Doubt, I wanted to leave the audience at the end not with an answer, but saying rather: ‘What a beautiful question.’ In that way, it becomes the audience’s story.”

Shanley’s play, given its world premiere off-Broadway in the fall of 2004, was swept onto Broadway via an avalanche of rave reviews. It opened at the Walter Kerr Theater in 2005 and remained there for a total of 25 previews and 525 performances, which then led to a lengthy national tour and numerous international productions.

In the wake of the play’s international success, Shanley came to believe that Doubt, with its ability to provoke and move audiences around the world, could inevitably do the same for movie audiences. Shanley had been writing screenplays for two decades, and had won an Oscar® for penning the romantic comedy “Moonstruck.” Adapting Doubt, he says, would be the most difficult screenwriting experience of all. The challenge at hand was to completely reenvision his play and allow it to become a different creature on the screen: more visceral, more dynamic, more open to the vibrant, burgeoning working class neighborhoods of 1960s New York.

“This story started with memories of growing up in the Bronx and then those memories became a play, and I used the stage and all the materials it had to offer to tell the story that way; and now, as a film, it has a profoundly different character,” Shanley says. “The kind of specificity you get in filmmaking — from the real air, the real buildings, the real things all around you — brings a verité to the story that the actors use to find a different level of performance. Theatre is very organized and real life is disorganized, so part of the process was shattering the story back into pieces and making it more like those original memories.”

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‘Doubt’ is 104 minutes, Rated PG-13 for Thematic Material
Release Date: December 12, 2008 Limited; Miramax Films