RIPPING AT THE CHURCH WHILE CHEWING THE SCENERY

Doubt
By John Patrick Shanley

As an adoring fan of Meryl Streep, I love studying her performances, her body movements and her facial expressions, as much as the next guy. She was once revered as the chameleon of accents and diverse roles. In one era alone she gave us THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, SILKWOOD, OUT OF AFRICA and A CRY IN THE DARK. And in between these she also managed THE DEER HUNTER, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, STILL OF THE NIGHT, PLENTY, HEARTBURN and IRONWEED. Wow!

Based purely on her illustrious career, it may seem that the recent years have not been as kind to Streep. Surely she still manages to pull tricks out of her versatile bag [ADAPTATION, THE HOURS]. She has also maintained her reputation and demeanour as a world-class actress and nice person. But perhaps she’s just gotten tired lately selecting her material and maybe she’s even tired of that nice persona. How else but to explain her overwrought MAMMA MIA turn this past year [not so nice].

So now I have taken on a new hope, by attending Streep movies if only to watch her having fun even if the film isn’t very good [THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, if you ask me] or whether her performance is not a stand-out [PRIME] or even, at its worst, all mannerisms [LIONS FOR LAMBS]. I mean, after all, how many balls can one hit out of the ballpark?

I must admit I walked in on DOUBT with some trepidation. After all, I saw the Pulitzer and Tony award winning Broadway production when it starred Cherry Jones and Brian O’Byrne, two big theatre names. I, for one, did not particularly take a shining to the material. I found the play stilted, dated and dull. I thought that sexual-abuse-in-the-church, as a topic, had already been handled delicately and intelligently beforehand and had since been exhausted. I saw no reason for a rehash. Yet, while Jones’ performance in particular was impressive, truth be told, I was truly bored.

So imagine me sitting through a filmed adaptation of a play I felt had no contributing virtues to progressive thinking and then being hit by a sledgehammer of rediscovery. Gee whiz was I that wrong all this time or did John Patrick Shanley – writer, and now also director of DOUBT, the movie, sharpened his dialogue, added some much needed dimension to its characters and heightened the essential conflict at the heart of DOUBT.

Not sure of Shanley’s revisions or intentions, but now, more than ever, DOUBT sounds like a play, a compilation of ideas. And that’s just fine by me, because finally it comes across like what I’ve wanted it to be all along. Listening to such crisp exchanges of debates and arguments makes it all that much more exciting. And I don’t even care what they’re about. This is clearly Philosophy 101 – The Play. Yet where Shanley compensates for in terms of pithy, observational word games, he somewhat lacks in vision as a director. As much as it sounds stagy, not a bad thing, it also appears staged, in fact too staged for its own good, no matter how much it’s been opened up. Incidentally, the same was true of Shanley’s previous and only other outing as director in 1990[!], JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO [with young Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan], an underappreciated and smart film that never really took a life form outside its fantastical realm and always had a theatrical feel to it.

All this to say that now that I have rediscovered the play and am happy to have done so, I only wish that Shanley would have let someone else make the film instead. As it stands, it is not a bad film at all, but that’s only because Shanley has two bright performers pitted against each other spewing smart and juicy dialogue. Yet they do so, while playing wildly different styles of acting in combat, and I am just not certain if Shanley was able to control them.

This is where Streep comes in. Here she’s like a torpedo. Yes I will admit Streep rightfully chose this more chewy than meaty role to highlight just how much fun can be had by playing a nasty shrew of an individual, a nun no less, one with questionable scruples, ironically judging every single peer around her. You can tell she’s having the time of her life doing so, more so than allowable. She isn’t nice, friendly or too bright, just as she would have it. Her philosophy is of the bitter, miserable variety, denouncing everybody’s virtues and good will. On film, she is written to be disliked, to get angry at and to listen to. Yes, every word that comes out of her mouth is a hypnotic one and you can’t help but listen. She makes you sit up and pay attention as she spews her ignorance – just like a nun. And truthfully, that’s all she and Shanley really want from us. So in these terms, DOUBT works. But oh boy does she overtake and overpower the film. As written, she is a force to be reckoned with.

In comes Philip Seymour Hoffman, surprisingly the subtler of the two, a very talented actor that I have never loved. I was shocked when I first heard of his casting. Let’s face it, I have seen O’Byrne on stage and he is a handsome, strapping man. Despite my preconceptions, turns out that hefty Hoffman is perfectly cast in a role that – believe it or not – doesn’t require any moral ambiguity. As written, from the start, we are clearly asked to empathize with his character – as a man of the cloak and elementary school teacher, accused of wrongdoing when a naïve colleague, an effectively subservient Amy Adams, implies that his affectionate intentions towards a young black student are more than simply amicable. And, just think, this is 1964. Black, boy, gay [although that precise word is never mentioned]. Such shocking a subject matter. In this case, it could have been anything. From the start we are asked to take a stand, his stand, so if Hoffman’s character even comes across unsympathetic or, in any way, questionable it is mainly due to subtle nuances by the actor himself, since no word uttered out of his mouth, and no visible action, would ever suggest it.

Which is why this script is interesting that way – and perhaps why it did not work for me on stage. There is clearly no debatable conflict between audience and priest. He comes across as being wronged. He is, without a doubt, innocent. Streep’s character, on the other hand, is clearly maliciously evil by virtue of her fears and ignorance. She spews hatred. She is the only one that has DOUBT. And, while frustrating a concept, it hardly contains a challenging thought.

However, using these actors [and Viola Davis, tearful in a long memorable scene alongside Streep] somehow works best for DOUBT on screen, as their characters are now slightly more developed – yet never fully realized - for the big screen. If anything, the big name stars resuscitate this big screen adaptation because, especially Streep, they become bigger than life. And DOUBT, never meant to reflect real life, needs to be over the top to effectively sell its one-sided pop-culture arguments.

Still this overly familiar topic, treated as discourse against the church, through a war of
characters as its weapon, can, like any other crash course summarizing key concepts, only go so far. So while the defamation of character is hardly a novelty, it has rarely been so well rendered in such a clear and efficiently concise language that it is a pity a better film could have not served it more effectively.

Still by the end, Streep, happily ugly as sin under her frock and habit, has redeemed herself from her MAMMA MIA debacle by playing a nasty shrewd and running with the show. A show worth seeing if only for the chance of being chewed out by Streep.