SEXUAL MCCARTHYISM IS REVISITED INDOUBT
Rumors about homosexual conduct destroyed careers following investigations of academic institutions and public schools in Florida from 1959-1964. The same hysteria is portrayed in Doubt, which John Patrick Shanley directs based on his stageplay. When the film begins, Father Brendan Flynn (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) is delivering a sermon in 1964 about doubt to a congregation at the chapel associated with St. Nicholas Church School (actually the College of Mt. St. Vincent) in the Bronx. His message, that those who doubt themselves and feel alone should realize that God is with them, puzzles Sister Aloysius Beauvier (played by Meryl Streep) until angelic Sister James (played by Amy Adams) reports to her something peculiar about the school’s only black student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II). Donald one day enters Sister James’s class with a distinct smell of alcohol on his breath after a session in the rectory with Father Flynn. Sister Aloysius, who has a reputation for being a strict mother superior vigilant in disciplining wayward students, then pursues the matter to find the truth about the possibility that the priest had the boy drink the sacramental wine with ulterior motives. But she substitutes her suspicion for the truth, summons Donald’s mother (played by Viola Davis), and confronts Father Flynn with the prospect that he will be defrocked until he transfers to another parish. Father Flynn is a kind, compassionate pastor, but she is the school principal, so a power struggle ensues, with Sister James caught in the middle, and a lose-lose outcome appears inevitable. Then a surprise ending, with the word “doubt” now spoken by Sister Aloysius. Credits begin with a dedication to Shanley’s kindergarten teacher, Sister Margaret James. MH