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
A JOURNALIST IS IMPRISONED FOR WITHHOLDING A SOURCE IN NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
In 2005, New York Times journalist Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for contempt of court–refusing to disclose who outed Valery Plame as a CIA agent. In an effort to dramatize the issue, Nothing But the Truth focuses on journalist Rachel Armstrong (played by Kate Beckinsale), who remains in jail for nearly a year for contempt of court and receives a two-year prison sentence for obstruction of justice for failing to disclose her source in a Capitol Sun-Times news story that she authors in which Erica Van Doren (played by Vera Farmiga) is identified as a CIA agent whose husband Oscar (played by Jamey Sheridan) wrote an article disputing intelligence that the Venezuelan government was behind a plot to assassinate the president of the United States, who in turn ordered an airstrike on the country. Quickly arrested and brought before a federal court by independent prosecutor Patton Dubois (played by Matt Dillon), Rachel holds out steadfastly despite stress in jail, her husband’s infidelity, pressure from the government and even her own attorney, and loss of her court case in the Supreme Court, where she is represented by Alan Burnside (played by Alan Alda). Burnside’s eloquent argument, noting that journalists have First Amendment protections written into the law of 49 states, is that sources of information that keep government accountable will dry up when journalists are compelled to disclose their sources, thus undermining the fundamental democratic principle of accountability of rulers to the ruled. Her case loses when the court decides 5-4 that national security trumps the First Amendment. Van Doren, it should be noted, is also persecuted. Two clues of the identity of Rachel’s source are cleverly inserted into the narrative, but most filmviewers will be surprised—and in full agreement with Rachel’s principled stand–when that source is revealed in the final frames of the film. Rod Lurie, who directed and wrote the screenplay of For Nothing But the Truth, has been nominated for a Political Film Society award for best film raising consciousness about the need for greater democracy. MH