Review of Doubt (2008) by Ian M — 09 Nov 2010

This is definitely not a movie for someone seeking a piece of pleasant escape fiction. This movie is dark gritty and real. It brings to film a lot of questions and is not pretentious enough to answer them.

The overall plot and driving element of the film is the clashing of a priest (Hoffman) with a nun/principal (Streep) over the school's only black student. The nun questions the priest's relationship with the boy. This is already dark territory, but the movie takes us even deeper at certain points. One scene that stole my (and seemingly everyone else's) attention was the mindset of the boy's mother. She is distraught and stuck between to utterly horrible options. And, while I whole-heartedly disagree with the choice she's made, I can tell that she is thinking from a place of love for her son.

The whole movie isn't completely dark. The film does engage thought in many scenes. The sermons are very interesting, serving not only as points for plot, but also points for thought. I specifically enjoyed the pillow/gossib parable.

In terms of acting, the film was phenomenal. Hoffman and Streep were on top of their game. Streep captures the drive, anger, and stern nature of the nun very well whitle Hoffman delivers the priest's compassion, ferocity and evasiveness perfectly. And, Davis, plays the mother and she is great. The writing was simple, and much less theatrical when compared to the rest of the cast, so it already had a stronger sense of realism. But the evasiveness and subdued nature that Davis brings makes the scene shockingly real.

This is a great movie to talk about at the end. I'm willing to bet that no two people will agree on the whole movie, and that makes it all the more impressive.