Viraj's Weblog

Took a bike ride to the AMC Mercado today to check out Doubt. It's generally about a priest accused of improper behavior with a student. It is based on a play, and through some of the dialogue you can tell. In fact it's mostly dialogue. It's an intelligent drama that works well on the big screen. Meryl Streep's performance is just amazing. I mean, she plays a really mean person, but does it flawlessly. There are really interesting subtleties she does that add so much to her character, like the way her eyes shift and the tilting of her neck. She is filled with distrust, for everyone.

I was surprised at just how comical the movie was, taking some rather taboo subject matter and still being able to find funny moments. Though I've never been in a Catholic school, it seemed to capture it pretty well and had a standard mean nun against little boys theme. The 'battle' scenes are between the nun (Streep) and the priest, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, also a great actor.

There is a certain subtext in the film that almost makes fun of religion and its formalities. The scenes in the rectory are especially interesting. As the priest and nun argue, they take turns sitting in the seat behind the desk. It becomes almost like a circus, with each side swapping deference depending on their position in the room. The writer is definitely poking fun at religion and the fact that those considered holy fall to the same evils as everyone else. The one hope is the happy-go-lucky nun who initially loves everyone and is mean to no one. She undergoes a change by the end of the movie, and it seems almost brought about by the bureaucracy of religion.

I would even go so far to say the movie is anti-religion. Judging by the high reviews, it makes sense. These days you can't make a movie glorifying religion and get good reviews. Atheists will shoot your movie down. It reminded me of the religious attacks in There Will Be Blood. In that movie, religious corruption is attacked physically, again with a subtle attack on organized religion itself.

Doubt takes a different approach, as if it is saying there are some good things in religion. It says only pay attention to aspects like compassion and love. It says disregard the institutionalized formalities and illogical faith. It's really saying what most agnostics think: religious text is literature, nothing more. There are some great stories in the Bible, and some really bad ones too. The characters in the movie seem like a dying breed, forever walled inside their concrete garden shielded from the city's non-religion. Various infiltrations come in the form of technology like ball-point pens and radios. The nun refuses to accept them, and even accuses the wind of changing like never before. But these things creep in anyways as a constant threat, and it's inevitable that the religious figures will be overwhelmed. It's subtle, but I think this movie shows more of a death of religion than anything else. Caveat emptor.