Doubt's questions, and certainties

By Steven Zeitchik

Catholics and lapsed Catholics turned out for "The Da Vinci Code," stayed away from "Henry Poole Is Here"  and gave the wholesomeness of a "High School Musical 3" a surprising amount of love.

Will the approximately sixty-five million people who comprise one of the country's largest religious denominations turn out in numbers to drive the Miramax/Scott Rudin production about a priest who may or may not have abused an altar boy into a hit?

On Broadway, of course, it didn't really matter; the awards and relatively small capacity of a single Times Square theater ensured that the play was a blockbuster by all measures.  But for an arthouse movie that goes wide on Christmas Day, the question is more pointed. Certainly John Patrick Shanley's film version of his own play (he called it tonight "the hardest screenplay he's ever written") won't win prizes from many archdioceses.

But the audience that is rarely marketed to and in many ways lies beyond the grasp of marketing will hold a big key to whether this movie blows up.

"Doubt" -- whether you love its performances or find them a little too theatrical, are primally moved to debate its ambiguities or ultimately think that the question of whether Philip Seymour Hoffman's Father Flynn 'really did it' is like discussing angels on the head of a pin, to use a phrase (or all of the above, probably the most accurate answer) -- is the kind of movie even the indie world is unfortunately moving away from: one that centers on the small dramas between flawed people.

But even with its refreshing attention to details, words and gestures -- and likely plentiful acting nominations -- the ultimate financial verdict remains a question.

Other recent plays-to-movies with similar creative goals haven't always succeeded. "The History Boys" (also a verbally sharp film about potential improprieties between male teacher and student) and "Proof" faltered a bit; it's bigger entertainments like "Chicago" that have flourished when moving to celluloid.

"Doubt," which we caught tonight at its L.A. premiere at the Academy has, like fall movies and presidential candidates, the expected mix of pros and cons -- virtues (soaring, sermonic dialogue; period and locational texture) question marks (a too-quick switch from factual ambiguity to moral ambiguity and then back again; Streep's oddly Bostonish accent) and outright surprises (Amy Adams, feeling startlingly believable and ridiculously Oscar-worthy as the ingenue nun). What it lacks at the moment is a key indicator of its commercial prospects.

It's notable that "Doubt" is the second movie this year, after Laurent Cantet's "The Class," that after an opening scene outside a school moves nearly all the action onto school grounds. Like "The Class," it takes less for granted about the best way to educate preadolescents than you might think.

The fact that it's a movie  about the question of modernizing religion versus using religion as a bulwark against modernity will help it strike many more (organ?) chords than a movie about pedagogy, and many other stage-to-screen attempts, for that matter. Hopefully it's enough to quell the you-know-what.