I’m not surprised Doubt has so many Oscar nominations. Each of them fully deserved. What a wonderful movie and what a wonderful play it’s based on – John Patrick-Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Doubt. The only thing that I was sorry about was to see it end.
Only Meryl Streep could have done this. She was every bit Mother Supriour as she watched over the strict Catholic school in her charge with a hawk’s eye. The slightest mischief wouldn’t escape her notice and be sharply reprimanded. She was singularly humorless, tough, and seemingly uncompassionate.
But Father Flynn wasn’t. And neither was Sister James. Father Flynn was everything Sister Aloysius was not. Spontaneous, warm, and most of all, compassionate. Father Flynn, played fabulously by the fantastic Philip Seymour, directed some of that compassion at the only black boy in the school. With disastrous consequences. Sister Aloysius instantly suspected sexual abuse. Tipped off by the innocent, naive and terribly good little Sister James, she went after Father Flynn.
The moral and ethical questions involved give this story its power. Why did it have to finish so soon?