shot / reverse shot

[Elliot]

God, it’s been a slow month for movies.  As we all wait on our tiptoes for the release of the big-name Oscar bait like “Benjamin Button” and “Revolutionary Road”, I went for a good three weeks without seeing anything until this week, when I finally started playing catchup.  “Bolt” was surprisingly fun, a quick-and-easy animated popcorn movie that was better than most if not wholly memorable.

But I want to say a few words about “Doubt”, which I just caught this afternoon.

I hate watching movie adaptations when I’m already familiar with the source material, for the obvious reason that constant comparison is inevitable and distracting.  Such was the case with “Doubt”, based on the play by writer-director John Patrick Shanley, an amateur production of which I caught in London earlier this year.  The film largely improves on the play, primarily opening up what was very much a chamber-drama on stage.  The play, which features only four actors and a handful of small location, works much better with a supporting cast and a little breathing room.  While much of it plays out like a stage production, with lots of talking and dialogue better suited for its origins, Shanley knows enough about filmmaking to take advantages of the closeups and cutaways that are unique to cinema, particularly effective in cuts to the point-of-view of our apparent villain, the vindictive Sister Aloysius.  Those close-ups are just one of a few ways in which Shanley infuses doubt into each scene and character, so that even the character we’re certain we hate turns out to have some redemptive quality.

But hey, who are we kidding.  Nobody’s coming to this movie for Shanley’s direction (which is capable if a bit bland through and through).  We’re here to see the powerhouse acting of Streep and Hoffman and even Amy Adams, who have been scooping up accolades and awards since before the movie even opened.  Streep isn’t at her best here, but even her worst is better than just about anything else out there these days.  She’s as good as a villain as she is as a heroine, and here creates a character wholly different from any she’s played before, including “The Devil Wears Prada”‘s Miranda Priestly, probably the closest Streep creation to this one.  Hoffman is subdued but still a treat to watch.  Amy Adams, clearly cast for her adeptness at playing the perky, naive optimist, is probably the biggest disappointment, failing to carry her Sister James beyond the one-note audience stand-in she is.  Viola Davis is very good in her one scene as the conflicted mother of a possible victim of sexual abuse.  Playing a character alternately dispicable and sympathetic with minimal dialogue all in the space of a few brief minutes, she provides a welcome respite from the almost-repetitive triangular dialogue between the three leads, though she isn’t the revelation some are making her out to be.

What keeps the film from greatness is perhaps also its greatest asset: rather than squeeze its characters and situations into cookie-cutter Hollywood good-vs.-evil archetypes, Shanley paints with a pallete of gray, which makes for more complex conflict than we are used to.  It’s never wholly clear who is the villain and who the hero, though we know it must be someone, so there’s never any opportunity for the kind of resolution the movies have always prepared us for.

It’s a movie well worth seeing and worth discussion (if you haven’t got questions when it’s over, you probably weren’t paying attention).  Is it a Best Picture nominee, though?  A Top Ten of the Year pick?  A movie that will be remembered for years to come?

Doubt it.