Why I believe in Doubt
By Jerilyn Covert
A great story, particularly one set against the backdrop of Catholicism, must always leave room for a little, well, doubt. And as the title suggests, the provocative new film Doubt leaves room for a lot of it. Biblical-sized portions, in fact. John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the play that the film is based on as well as the movie-script adaptation, has said that he chose the title for his Pulitzer Prize winning play before he even knew what it would be about. Maybe it was Shanley’s own Catholic upbringing, but the concept of doubt–and by that token, truth–clearly is something that intrigues him. In the film adaptation of his theatrical play, plot twists are thrown in the viewer’s path like roadblocks on her way to church. Set in 1964, in the thick of the Civil Rights movement, the film centers on the suspicions of Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) that Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is sexually abusing a young black student–the school’s first. Alone in her crusade against the priest, Sister Aloysius may be on the side of the angels, but with little evidence and few options available to her within the constraints of an institution that places Father Flynn squarely above her in the church order, proving her allegations may be as impossible as proving the existence of God.
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