the Color of Context

Doubt debuted in October at the AFI film festival and was released to a wider audience in December. Rated PG-13 for thematic material, the movie opens on the very streets where Shanley grew up–a New York neighborhood populated mostly by working-class Irish and Italian families. (The movie is set also in the same Catholic school building where Shanley attended class as a child.) Enter a young boy (Lloyd Clay Brown) rushing to get to church on time: “I’m an altar boy,” he shouts by way of explanation for his hurry. At church, he meets up with a fellow altar boy (Donald Muller, played by Joseph Foster), a frowning black boy with apparent concerns over fitting into his robes. Cut to Father Flynn’s sermon, which, to the ears of us omniscient members of the movie audience, could be construed as a careful confession. But it doesn’t take long for our initial prejudices to implode. Father Flynn is friendly, charismatic, and easygoing, if a tad indulgent. In sharp contrast, Sister Aloysius, the school principal, is an old-school nun with a penchant for discipline. One telling scene comically juxtaposes the boisterous drinking and loud dinner conversation of the priests, with the quiet continence of dinner with the nuns. Father Flynn drinks, smokes, and takes his tea with three sugars. He comes across as warm and approachable, joking with the students like he’s their close uncle instead of their priest. Meanwhile, Sister Aloysius takes careful pains to run a tight ship, exercising corporal punishment and single-handedly eradicating cough drops (“candy by another name”) and ball-point pens (they make the children write like monkeys) from her school. With such clashing personalities, it’s not surprising that these two would butt heads.

But Sister Aloysius’s allegations are more serious. When Father Flynn reaches out to young Donald, Sister Aloysius begins to worry that Flynn’s motives are not as virtuous as they seem. After Sister James (Amy Adams) tells her that Donald was pulled out of her classroom one day to attend a private meeting with Flynn in the rec room, the two nuns confront the priest about the incident. Eventually, Sister James is satisfied with the Father’s explanation, but Sister Aloysius is not. She steps outside her bounds as a nun, determined to do everything possible to expose the truth about Flynn and put a stop to the intolerable behavior she believes is taking place within her school walls. The film’s best scenes take place in Sister Aloysius’s office–including the final showdown between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius. The two spar off in a power struggle marked by quick-fire dialogue and incredible acting that will surely win both Streep and Hoffman Oscar nods.

Besides the main plot, issues of religion, morality, gender, and race carry the film like the metaphorical–and literal–winds of change that decorate the outdoor scenes with in-flight leaves and feathers. And although part of me, like Sister Aloysius, hopes for some tangible piece of evidence of Father Flynn’s guilt, “the truth” turns out to be as ephemeral as one of those leaves, and the closest we may ever come is through varying measures of faith and doubt.