I cannot be too effusive in my accolades for the superb film version of "Doubt" featuring the twin thespian towers of Meryl Streep and P.S. Hoffman. I emphatically urge the masses to get to a cineplex and take in this thought-provoking drama with the wonderfully medieval trappings...You don't have to be Catholic (or in my case, raised Catholic before I gave it up for Lent...saw that hole in the wire and scrambled through it like McQueen in "The Great Escape") to fully savor the cerebral pleasures of this duel...There are at least four Oscars to be handed out for this magnificent picture, three of them for searing performances that will rattle about in your consciousness for days after the final credits roll...
What fascinates me however is the cascade of vituperation by film critics for Meryl Streep's character, Sister Aloysius, the fearsome nun and parochial school principal at the core of the film. Suffice to say, a majority of them find the character wholly malevolent, irredeemably reactionary, vicious, and demonic.
I don't know what it says about me, but I thought that she was the most admirable character in the entire story! I remember thinking the same thing when I saw Cherry Jones in the part onstage (Cherry Jones by the way was the equal of Ms. Streep...her performance was utterly electrifying...). I completely "got" where Sister Aloysius was coming from, and I am genuinely baffled by the critical castigation of the character.
Perhaps it is my fourteen years as a secondary teacher, perhaps it is my inner predilection for Franco-style fascism, but Sister Aloysius completely resonates with me from the first moment that she rises from the back of the church and lurches down the aisle to administer discipline and quash the faintest sign of disorder and disrespect amid the "progressive" priest's homily on the virtues of moral vacillation, excuse me, doubt. There is something wonderfully, intrinsically conservative about Sister Aloysius...conservative in the sense that she is a realist about human nature, particularly that of unformed children and the inherently fallen nature of humanity...She has "The Lord of the Flies" in her DNA...conservative in the sense that like all true conservatives she cherishes order and is wary, if not outright hostile and skeptical towards change, knowing, as George Will said, "that most new ideas are bad." Her antennae for evil is highly refined, and she does not shrink from defending the flock from the wolves in the face of a rigidly patriarchal hierarchy.
While she is ridiculous in her resistance to trivia like the inclusion of "Frosty the Snowman," in the Christmas Pageant, she is also the fierce and unyielding lioness, defending her vulnerable charges from seemingly affable serpents in the garden, as well as themselves.
To be utterly blunt, I don't care how liberal and enlightened you think you are, if you have kids in school, you'd much rather have a Sister Aloysius type watching over your children than the "progressive" and charismatic Father Flynns. To paraphrase Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," you want her on that wall, you need her on that wall!
I think I must have flunked the basic test of the play and the movie, because I came out of both seeing Sister Aloysius as an unqualified hero...but see it for yourself...it's excellent.
