Doubt (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis) – Two of the best actors of our age transform this Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play about the tensions between a conservative nun and a liberal priest in a Catholic school and parish onto the big screen with gravitas. Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Father Flynn in an intense and timely story about possible pedophilia in the Church circa 1964. Sister Aloysius runs the school with an iron fist that makes her extremely unpopular while Father Flynn is the dynamic and caring pastor who connects with the kids. Needless to say, the two are not a match made in heaven. Everything about Flynn bothers the nun – from the way he touches the troublemaker and his perfectly manicured fingernails to his secular views. In short, she doubts everything about him. But she is supremely certain in her beliefs about everything – well, almost everything. She is clearly the audience’s villain even though she occasionally shows both a sense of humor and compassion. When her sycophant of a young nun and history teacher, Sister James (played by Academy Award nominee Amy Adams), spots Flynn inviting the school’s first black student to the rectory, she dutifully reports it to Sister Aloysius, who jumps quickly to her conclusions.
The joy of the movie is in the interplay of the three primary characters with Adams, innocent as she is, showing more gumption than expected while Streep and Hoffman keep their physical and emotional distance. All of the principals – even Viola Davis as the mother of the black child who’s is just pleased that some man is showing her son attention – are Oscar possibilities. The movie avoids feeling like a play for most of its 90 minutes, but its biggest scenes inevitably take place on “little sets.” But this doesn’t take away from this beautifully acted, highly relevant film that is a critical commentary on the Catholic Church.