Doubt. Movie Review .

 If you have ever attended Catholic School the film Doubt will carry you back to a place no amount of time can erase from your memory. I think most Catholics would agree that praying Rosary beads and reciting Hail Marys is proof positive even for the most modern of educational theorists  that rote memory does make permanent memory. Many lapsed Catholics  who have not attended Mass in years could still recite the Apostle's Creed in Latin if called upon to do so. What happens in Catholicism to a person stays with them. It stays even when one has embraced other philosophies.

I recommend the film because it reaches into so many essential elements of existence that touch us all. The writing explores more than the guilt of a parish priest suspected of pedophilia. It reaches into the question of change . It asks what should be kept and what should be abandoned. That  is a question that confronts every  person many times in their lives and in the case of this film it touches that which is subject to change within an institution. 

Sister Aloyisius is the protector of the traditions that have served her well for years as the director of the school. She finds ball point pens and secular hymns an intrusion upon those traditions. Ironically, she is the one that brings the question of impropriety such has only relatively recently come to light within the ranks of the Catholic hiarchy . The film also suggests the closing of ranks and the protection of offenders by members of that heiarchy. 

The film goes even further in its dramatic portrayal of the novice finding her voice and filtering eventually what is valuable in the advice from her mentor, Sister Aloysius.  In a particularly interesting scene the good sister shows the novitiate how to keep an eye on her students' behavior by observing them in the reflection of a glass frame of a picture of the Pope.  Though somewhat intimidated by Sister Aloysius, the novice, Sister James finally asserts herself in defense of her best efforts and in support of her affection for "Frosty the Snowman." Still she recognizes  that  the deep wisdom of  the sister is valuable. She must assume more of the stern demeanor of sister Aloyisius to maintain discipline in her classroom.

The film captures so much from a different time that reaches into the consciousness of the present. The questions being addressed by the Ecumenical Council in its modernization of the church are questions for all of us to pose now. What about our beliefs is certain? About what in the world and in ourselves do we still question? Where is our certainty and where lies our doubt? 

 I would recommend this film highly for its rich and powerful writing, its extraordinary acting perfomances and for its way of stimulating one to bring universal elements of life under examination