Doubt

Director: John Patrick Shanley
Year: 2008
Rating: **

A star for Meryl, a star for PSH; I'm over the rest of it. This was written, initially awarded, and would work so much better as a PLAY... and it shows. The acting is perfectly honed; Meryl is a wonder of contradiction, exhibiting dry humor, moments of kindness, and a chilling drive for justice all at once, and PSH re-won my heart (after that disaster of a movie called Synecdoche, New York) with his focused intensity. However, all the dialogue and build of the script would work so much better in a live, intimate setting and wouldn't feel so abbreviated and ultimately anticlimactic as it did on the big screen.

Meryl plays the strict, old-school principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, fiercely laying down the law as Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams try to bring a little kindness into the lives of the children as the priest and eighth grade history teacher, respectively. PSH's first sermon, about Doubt and how it can bring a community together as much as faith, brings Meryl to wonder what he himself is doubting; she sets the nuns on red-alert to look for whatever might be wrong. As he extends a kind hand to the one black boy in the school, Amy questions the extent of his kindness... and the cycle of suspicion begins. With (thankfully) only a few hammer-it-over-your-head moments (a cat catching a mouse as Meryl starts her dance of accusation with PSH, for example), I suppose it was less predictable than one might expect of this type of story... but ultimately I was... how do you say... Whelmed.

Things about which I'm unclear:

1.) Why Amy Adams continues to be cast as the sweet-voiced, eye-batting innocent and being heralded as an acting champion; why not challenge her to do something different?! I'm dying to know if she can even handle anything else -- put her in a badass role, kicking the shit out of some unsuspecting slag and simultaneously making me wonder at her absolute commitment, and maybe I'll be convinced that she deserves all these nominations. I found that her choices in Doubt were pretty much exactly the same as every other film she's made in the past 3 years -- was Enchanted filming down the street and she just threw on a habit and jumped in? Cause really, I half-expected the squirrels in the courtyard to start singing the Psalms as she talked with Meryl beneath the trees.

2.) Why Viola Davis was nominated for her one scene?! She was... fine... but no more than that, in my opinion. I also found myself being extremely distracted by the rivers of snot running from her nose directly into her mouth... so perhaps I'm a less-than-focused reviewer in her case.

I'm glad I saw it before the Oscars; I feel suitably able to judge the pertinent nominated categories as a result, but if it weren't for that I think I could have gone without Doubt... without a doubt... (HA).