DOUBT: DOUBTING THE HIGH GROUND
Like the work says, “Doubt is a thing that can sustain us…” And throughout the parable, as it were, Doubt sustains us not only with brilliant powerhouse performances from some of our times greatest actors, but additionally with the ponderance of our own certainties on, well, everything really, but especially our own morality. What better place to question people’s place in the world than in a Catholic elementary school right after Kennedy’s assassination? In John Patrick Shanley’s cinematic adaptation of his Tony and Pulitzer award winning play Doubt: A Parable we are not only sustained by ambiguity, but we are mesmerized by it. And ultimately, left with it. Questioning our intimate senses of morality …show more content…
So, it’s no surprise that whilst out of the medium he so adores, he inhabits the realm with aplomb and integral understanding of the audience’s perspective as well as the actors. Indubitably much of this must come from seeing his play in production for so many years. The great feat is in identifying and capturing subtle nuances that the actors can display that may go unrewarded in a theatrical performance. Shanley can go in close with the camera and capture Meryl Strep as Sister Aloysius Beauvier, sitting there with shrugs, sighs and rolling eyes during a children’s choir that even a curmudgeonly Catholic has gotten sick of hearing. Her scowls at a disciplined, almost penitent, dinner table that are contradicted by her subtle care for the elderly sisters at the table. We gather a sense of strength and compassion from this character without hearing too many lines. The same might be said from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character Father Flynn. We get a rousing sermon or two out of him as well as a more intimate look at him as a basketball coach. And when we see him as a basketball coach that we get this hint of something, well, peculiar about the priest. He’s irked, not so much by the players’ performance on court but rather their fingernails and how unkempt they …show more content…
Young Mr. Miller (Muller in the play), a ripe target for both bullies and perhaps more insidious predators who would take advantage of their isolation. We see where this is going. In open confrontation, Sister Aloysius challenges the Priest and the very patriarchy that lends him his power and a degree of impunity from his sins, if there are any. Ultimately, he must feel guilty for something and tacitly confesses guilt by resigning, but only after the intense grilling, manipulation and blackmailing from Sister Aloysius. But the ideas and motivations are questionable on every side, even the victim’s mother Mrs. Miller has questionable motives which she may regret, but cannot control and MUST not for the sake of her son’s future. Love and righteousness are cast into a haze of doubt in the most extreme
Like the work says, “Doubt is a thing that can sustain us…” And throughout the parable, as it were, Doubt sustains us not only with brilliant powerhouse performances from some of our times greatest actors, but additionally with the ponderance of our own certainties on, well, everything really, but especially our own morality. What better place to question people’s place in the world than in a Catholic elementary school right after Kennedy’s assassination? In John Patrick Shanley’s cinematic adaptation of his Tony and Pulitzer award winning play Doubt: A Parable we are not only sustained by ambiguity, but we are mesmerized by it. And ultimately, left with it. Questioning our intimate senses of morality …show more content…
So, it’s no surprise that whilst out of the medium he so adores, he inhabits the realm with aplomb and integral understanding of the audience’s perspective as well as the actors. Indubitably much of this must come from seeing his play in production for so many years. The great feat is in identifying and capturing subtle nuances that the actors can display that may go unrewarded in a theatrical performance. Shanley can go in close with the camera and capture Meryl Strep as Sister Aloysius Beauvier, sitting there with shrugs, sighs and rolling eyes during a children’s choir that even a curmudgeonly Catholic has gotten sick of hearing. Her scowls at a disciplined, almost penitent, dinner table that are contradicted by her subtle care for the elderly sisters at the table. We gather a sense of strength and compassion from this character without hearing too many lines. The same might be said from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character Father Flynn. We get a rousing sermon or two out of him as well as a more intimate look at him as a basketball coach. And when we see him as a basketball coach that we get this hint of something, well, peculiar about the priest. He’s irked, not so much by the players’ performance on court but rather their fingernails and how unkempt they …show more content…
Young Mr. Miller (Muller in the play), a ripe target for both bullies and perhaps more insidious predators who would take advantage of their isolation. We see where this is going. In open confrontation, Sister Aloysius challenges the Priest and the very patriarchy that lends him his power and a degree of impunity from his sins, if there are any. Ultimately, he must feel guilty for something and tacitly confesses guilt by resigning, but only after the intense grilling, manipulation and blackmailing from Sister Aloysius. But the ideas and motivations are questionable on every side, even the victim’s mother Mrs. Miller has questionable motives which she may regret, but cannot control and MUST not for the sake of her son’s future. Love and righteousness are cast into a haze of doubt in the most extreme