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By Meseret Haddis
As I do with most stage to screen adaptations, I had my doubts about John Patrick Shanely’s film Doubt, which he adapted and directed from his Pulitzer Prize winning play.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins’s visual style reminds me of Vittorio Storaro’s work on The Conformist, where the camera provides an almost internal look into the characters through Dutch angles, ominous establishing shots and slow dolly sequences that put extraordinary importance in a movement. Despite its stylistic similarities to The Conformist’s clean visual style, it’s hardly as fancy. Here, the film’s reliance on its performances keeps the visuals in the realm of staged theatre. The performances shift from the mannered to the melodramatic, leaving you with mixed reactions for both the authentic and the melodramatic performances.
The first scene immediately establishes the film’s dynamic. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) begins speaking about his sermon topic: doubt. While reciting the sermon, he stands before us (the audience in the church and in the theater), establishing a hierarchy in the film and in the setting. Sister James (Amy Adams) is sitting in the pews, near the front of the church, listening. Ensconced with her parishioners, Sister James is provided with facts, and she uses them to guide her understanding. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is shrouded when we first see her; strolling the pews, smacking talking children in the back of the head, scolding others who are nodding off, she represents a dynamic counterpoint to Sister James and Father Flynn. She represents the authority of everything on that level (the school and the children), while Father Flynn represents an authority over them (with God and the children’s parents). Even before any confrontation, a conflict with control already exits.
The performances born from this dynamic are predictable. We find Sister Aloysius put in contradicting light towards the beginning of the film, giving us contention with our perception of her. We don’t like her cold demeanor, but can’t help but be touched when she prevents an older, partially blind nun from being expelled from the convent. This sense of empathy quickly deteriorates once the ball is rolling in the quest against Father Flynn. There’s even a point when (after the first acquisition about Father Flynn’s inappropriate behavior with an alter boy, Donald, has been made) Father Flynn asks Sister Aloysius if the elderly nun who hurt herself was losing her sight. Sister Aloysius denies it without hesitation but, at that point, her compassion is almost secondary and a little alien to the moment.
Surprisingly, this feels like a very non-directorial film, meaning the performances seemed very much in the realm of the actor’s ability and what was presented didn’t surprise me when it came to these actors. When you have a cast this spectacular, you know what you are getting, but there are moments in this film that feel like a performance. When Streep explodes at Hoffman in their second, secluded, confrontation I expected all of their loud yelling and sharp movements, but it felt alien and out of place and particularly like a performance.
Throughout Doubt, the camera becomes a God-like figure that watches and influences what it sees. When Mrs. Miller (Donald’s mother) leaves Sister Aloysius on her way to work, after Sister Aloysius tries to recruit her to fight against Father Flynn, the camera is angled right above Streep, looking down, much like the hand of God pointing down on the gossiper in Father Flynn’s sermon. The sermon is about a woman who confesses to a priest that she had a dream where she saw the hand of god pointing down on her after she had been gossiping. The priest tells her to leave and to take a pillow and bring it to the roof of her house, cut it open and come back. When the woman had done this, the priest says that she must now go and gather back all of the feathers from the pillow. The woman remarks, but I don’t know where they all are and the priest says that’s what a gossip is, and after it’s out it can’t be recalled. This image immediately cuts to a level shot, as a gust of wind violently blows the leaves like the feathers of a gossiper in the Father’s story, spreading out so much that it marks the point of no return for Sister Aloysius. It’s no surprise that the next scene is the biggest confrontation of the film.
The camera’s objectivity is something beyond theater that can’t be expressed in any way but through the camera. It’s impossible to show the importance of a background character checking the time on his watch in a play, unless the character does it calling attention to the audience or it’s blatantly stating that he’s doing so. In a film a quick shot of a character checking their watch can’t be missed by the audience. It’s a form of subtlety that easier in film. When you have a play, it’s two-dimensional, meaning we are only able to see the characters and the setting from one angle (from our chairs in the audience). We can’t see them from behind or from below or above like you can in a film. Angle can influence how we view a character, or place importance in an object or location; it’s essentially unspoken dialogue. In Doubt, that simple over the head shot expresses something that words can only complicate
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