Doubt.

"A passionate liberal priest goes toe-to-toe with an inflexible, authoritarian mother superior in John Patrick Shanley's theatrical barnburner Doubt," writes David Ansen. "Shanley, directing his own work, throws in a few cinematic flourishes—he's big on tilted angles—but they only reinforce Doubt's theatrical nature." Also in Newsweek: a conversation with Shanley and Meryl Streep.

"Shanley's film is nowhere near as sophisticated as his play," writes Gabriel Shanks; "on screen, Doubt's visual metaphors become grossly overstated, and the claustrophic tension that is natural in theatre is lost on celluloid. In overblown scene after scene, there are raised eyebrows, furtive glances, and longer-than-usual stares; at times, the story's cruelty is woefully blunted by the screenplay's careening tendency to wallow and indulge. In short, Doubt should have been a great film. And it's my sad duty to report to you that it's not."

Updated through 12/13.

"Casting Philip Seymour Hoffman as the priest is a radical error," argues Dan Callahan in Slant; "it feels like almost a perverse bit of sabotage. For the all-important scene with the mother to work, the priest needs to be a charming, seductive man, something Hoffman refuses to attempt; the role needs a Russell Crowe, or a Jeff Bridges. As it stands, we can only cringe at his character's sodden duplicity and hope that his head will someday explode with all his pent-up anguish; I cannot be alone in my wish to never have to endure Hoffman having a noisy, self-indulgent tantrum in close-up on screen ever again. Conversely, Amy Adams is perfect as the young, trusting Sister James, while acting students are sure to marvel at Meryl Streep's portrayal of Sister Aloysius, a watchful, red-eyed mother hen who knows she has to bluff and resort to dirty-pool tactics to get rid of this force of evil in her midst."

Nick Schager: "Doubt works so diligently at setting up a scenario where truth can't be definitively ascertained that its concluding argument about the universality (and reasonableness) of doubt - and the danger of rigid conviction - feels somewhat artificially inviolable, the filmmaker stacking the deck in favor of uncertainty to a degree that makes his final argument feel too easy."

"I didn't know you could hiss, groan, and murmur at the same time, but Streep can do anything," writes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "She is, of course, wasted on this elephantine fable; if only Doubt had been made in 1964, shot by Roger Corman over a long weekend, and retitled Spawn of the Devil Witch or Blood Wimple, all would have been forgiven."

David Carr talks with Shanley for the New York Times.

Mick Brown talks with Streep about Doubt in the Telegraph.

Updates, 12/9: "Had Shanley - whose only previous directorial effort was the odd cult comedy Joe Versus the Volcano - entrusted his play to surer hands, Doubt might have been the dramatic powerhouse the playwright obviously wanted it to be," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "But he certainly got close, and that counts for something."

"It's a fine story, a great cast, and some wickedly impressive dialogue," blogs Matt Dentler. "As a feature film, though, it doesn't offer up more than a great foursome of performances."

"Given the strength of the source material and the pedigree of its cast and crew, Doubt may be the ultimate low-risk, high-reward prestige product, and it would be wrong for me to suggest that Shanley has produced anything less than a gripping piece of work," writes Chris Wisniewski at indieWIRE. "Despite its many virtues, though, Doubt is also bloodless. Handsome, well played, and oddly forgettable, it never manages to live up to the promise of its big ideas and heady speeches."

Updates, 12/10: "In a hyperreactive news culture increasingly ruled by caffeinated bloggers who prize speed of coverage over the search for evidence," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice, "any movie that questions public rushes to judgment wins points going in. But Doubt is only marginally, and tendentiously, about moral uncertainty—it's more about the sins of a nosy old biddy who pulls out all the stops when going through the official channels of a male-dominated Catholic Church would get her nowhere. With its bristling topicality, ritzy cast, and the added bonus of Roger Deakins's gracefully bleak cinematography, Doubt is being squired around town as prime Oscar bait. But in Shanley's hands, it only looks deep."

Nick McCarthy in the L Magazine: "First, the good: the camera gives Shanley the ability to close-up on intense, one-on-one argumentation (even if Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the priest Sister Aloysius accuses of child molestation, and Streep still scream as if they are trying to reach the audience member in the last row) and the ensemble's expressive faces (Viola Davis deserves credit for employing the most effective use of dripping snot since The Blair Witch Project). Unfortunately, the camera also gives Shanley the freedom to cram in dozens of transparent techniques which range from unsuccessful to embarrassing."

Ed Gonzalez: "I like how Streep localizes her character's rage (and possibly her resentment for having lived a life beneath a nun's habit) entirely in the face and eyes, but the whole time I felt as if I were trapped inside an elevator (even when Shanley hilariously opens out the material to the projects near the school where the story takes place) with every member of the National Board of Review."

James Rocchi talks with Shanley for Cinematical.

Update, 12/11: "Streep in her black bonnet and Hoffman with his meticulously parted hair and long, clean fingernails are never quite believable," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Shanley hasn't mastered the histrionic power evident in Ronald Neame's near-classic theater-to-film movies The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Tunes of Glory - duologues which were also sociological time capsules."

Updates, 12/13: "Ms Streep blows in like a storm, shaking up the story's reverential solemnity with gusts of energy and comedy," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "The performance may make no sense in the context of the rest of the film, but it is - forgive me, Father - gratifying nunsense.... Mainstream moviemaking... insists on clear parameters, tidy endings, easy answers and a world divided into heroes and villains, which may help explain why Mr Shanley's film feels caught between two mediums and why Ms Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life or at least dramatic realism."

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "Doubt is an intentionally fuzzy movie, and those who respond to it will inevitably use its intentional smudginess as a defense, claiming that we're not supposed to walk away from it with any reasonable certainty: We're not supposed to know who's gay and who's not, who may or may not be an abused kid. We're only supposed to know that Sister Aloysius is one superbitch from hell - on that score, neither Shanley nor the outlandishly one-note Streep leave any doubt."

Streep's "performance stops the movie from becoming another trapped-in-amber adaptation is beyond a shadow of a you-know-what," writes David Fear in Time Out New York.

"It's a filmed play that feels like exactly that," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "Doubt would be my recommendation for the movie to see with your parents during this year's holiday visit - not because priestly pedophilia is a hallmark of the Yuletide season, but because this is the kind of film that sparks long conversations: Not 'Thumbs up or thumbs down?' but 'Did he do it?' and 'Should she have pursued him?' and that first of all religious and epistemological questions: 'How can we ever know?'"

"[I]t took me a while when it was over to stop shaking," writes New York's David Edelstein. "It's the dramatist's business to sow doubt, to set down points of view that can't be reconciled, and Shanley makes visceral the notion that one can be right but never absolutely right, that doubt might be our last, best hope."

"The film doesn't go far enough to transcend its stage roots, yet the few stylistic chances it takes - mainly in the form of tilted camera angles - are distracting in the extreme," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "Yet its failings as cinema aren't enough to obscure the richness and thematic breadth of the material, which astutely examines issues of faith, justice, hypocrisy, change, and, yes, doubt within the Catholic Church."

"Part psychological thriller, part character study, Doubt is finally a lucid, sharply observed taxonomy of hierarchy, offering an absorbing look at how often power shifts and changes hands within rigidly stratified institutions," writes Ann Hornaday for the Washington Post.

"As many movie fans know by now, the prologue to last summer's Tropic Thunder features some brilliant spoof trailers, including one for a phony film called Satan's Alley (which won the 'coveted Crying Monkey Award at the Beijing Film Festival')." Jeffrey M Anderson at Cinematical: "Better seen than described, it's a brilliant deconstruction of every pompous award-hungry film that comes out in December. The trailer for John Patrick Shanley's Doubt looks a lot like that, but if I've learned one thing this year, it's to not trust trailers. Happily, the real Doubt is a great deal sprightlier, cleverer and more powerful than its dreadful promo would suggest."

Stephen Saito talks with Shanley for IFC "about the trickiness of adapting modern plays into films and the parallels between Doubt and the recent presidential election."

Posted by dwhudson at December 8, 2008 6:40 AM