Beren's World
United States
March 13, 2009
After finishing the lesson on Doubt , I realized I left out a lot about why I found the movie so powerful. First, a quick overview: Meryl Streep plays the headmistress of an east coast Catholic school, in charge of the students but wielding less power and persuasion regarding matters at the school than her male counterpart, a priest played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In the first half of the movie, the strict and orderly lives of the nuns is juxtaposed with that of the priests, who swill bourbon while chainsmoking after dinner.
The second half (or act, as the movie is based on a play titled Doubt: A Parable) highlights the rapidly disintegrating relationship between the headmistress and headmaster after a young, naive, incredibly pious nun witnesses what could be construed as an inappropriate relationship between the headmaster and the only black student in the school, a young boy from a troubled home. Ultimately, the headmaster leaves the school under a cloud of suspicion, and the headmistress continues on at the school, governing in a heavy handed fashion deemed old fashioned and alienating of the students, but steeped in tradition nonetheless.
What made the movie compelling to me is that it leaves the viewer without any clear answer as to where the moral center of the film lies, but with a bigger question regarding the nature of morality and how far one must go to seek the truth. The acting is superb, being more character driven than visually overreaching like alot of Hollywood movies, and will leave you questioning the "truth" of the movie for days.
The second half (or act, as the movie is based on a play titled Doubt: A Parable) highlights the rapidly disintegrating relationship between the headmistress and headmaster after a young, naive, incredibly pious nun witnesses what could be construed as an inappropriate relationship between the headmaster and the only black student in the school, a young boy from a troubled home. Ultimately, the headmaster leaves the school under a cloud of suspicion, and the headmistress continues on at the school, governing in a heavy handed fashion deemed old fashioned and alienating of the students, but steeped in tradition nonetheless.
What made the movie compelling to me is that it leaves the viewer without any clear answer as to where the moral center of the film lies, but with a bigger question regarding the nature of morality and how far one must go to seek the truth. The acting is superb, being more character driven than visually overreaching like alot of Hollywood movies, and will leave you questioning the "truth" of the movie for days.
