![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Loved it. The acting was great with Meryl Street superb as ever, and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams and Viola Davis also very fine.
I really wanted to see it as a play (it won the Pulitzer)with Brían F. O'Byrne and Cherry Jones but never got around to it.
Some Spoilers below:
It takes place in 1964 in Boston and there is a culture clash a-coming between the strict, by the book disciplinarian Principal of a Catholic middle school--Sister Aloysius and the more compassionate Father Flynn.
As Streep plays her, the woman is insufferable but believable and does (very) occasionally show signs of compassion--most notably toward an elderly nun who is going blind. But generally she is a monster--the kind of nun everyone I know who was schooled in Catholic schools seems to have been terrorized by.
She despises Father Flynn and seeks to rid the school of him any way she can. There is one negro student in the school and Father Flynn protects him from the bullies. The question is what is Flynn's motivation? Is he "preying" on the boy or not? Has he made advances toward the boy or not? There is a brilliant scene between the boy's mother and Sister Aloysius during which the stakes are made quite clear.
A young nun plays an innocent who tries to do what is right.
"Doubt" is the perfect title for the play/movie.
I really wanted to see it as a play (it won the Pulitzer)with Brían F. O'Byrne and Cherry Jones but never got around to it.
Some Spoilers below:
It takes place in 1964 in Boston and there is a culture clash a-coming between the strict, by the book disciplinarian Principal of a Catholic middle school--Sister Aloysius and the more compassionate Father Flynn.
As Streep plays her, the woman is insufferable but believable and does (very) occasionally show signs of compassion--most notably toward an elderly nun who is going blind. But generally she is a monster--the kind of nun everyone I know who was schooled in Catholic schools seems to have been terrorized by.
She despises Father Flynn and seeks to rid the school of him any way she can. There is one negro student in the school and Father Flynn protects him from the bullies. The question is what is Flynn's motivation? Is he "preying" on the boy or not? Has he made advances toward the boy or not? There is a brilliant scene between the boy's mother and Sister Aloysius during which the stakes are made quite clear.
A young nun plays an innocent who tries to do what is right.
"Doubt" is the perfect title for the play/movie.
Tags:
From:
Yes
His take on it was that it was all about "did he or didn't he" w/ the movie being rather manipulative in giving out info to keep the tension working. He felt the racial tensions of the time were seriously downplayed, & the view of sexuality was a little too sophisticated for the period, but those are all issues to which we're pretty sensitive. I dunno, maybe it's my own perceptions of how you each described it that are really. In any case, he thought the performances were uniformly excellent, w/ serious kudos going to the "innocent" nun.
From:
Re: Yes
I've heard that Amy Adams got some bad reviews for her performance (but I haven't read any of the reviews so don't know for sure).