John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" (2008)
I did not see this Pulitzer-Prize winning play when it was staged on Broadway, and so thought I would see the movie, directed by the playwright, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie was shot in the Bronx, the play's location, in the Catholic elementary school Shanley attended. To bring that Irish and Italian neighborhood and the Sisters of Charity (who run the school) to life, the movie begins with a strong attention to detail that is not quite integrated into the action. As a result the opening feels slow, feels like scene-setting. The confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn over the latter's illicit involvement with a black student sizzles due to the sharp dialogue, and Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman's performances. I did not feel, however, that the issue of certainty in an uncertain world is explored to any revelatory depth. Sister Aloyisus's pinched certainty is vindicated in the end when Father Flynn resigns and so "confesses...