Doubt

Working on the basis that if Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in a film then the film is worth seeing, I have been looking forward to seeing Doubt since I saw my first trailer for it some weeks back. A review in the Guardian last week made me a little worried that I would be disappointed, but thankfully this was every bit the character drama I was expecting from a couple of Hollywood heavyweights.

If you like action films, or even films which have cameras that move, you might be in for a hard time with Doubt. However that was never going to be the point here, in a film about potential child abuse in the Catholic church in 1960s New York the action is all in the dialogue. There is a lot of dialogue, but the sight of Hoffman and Meryl Streep verbally knocking barrels of shit out of each other is plenty to keep it interesting. The film doesn't seem to really be about what happens, it's more about what the characters think is happening and how they react. The two main characters huge huge egos and the town isn't really big enough for the both of them. Streep's character harks back to the traditional ways and sees Hoffman's progressive ideas as a threat, the mutual mistrust drives the drama.

It's not just about the two main characters though. I really enjoyed watching Amy Adams' character; she is a young and fresh-faced teacher with ideals, but she is far too naïve for her own good. I loved watching the way that the character seemed torn between the pragmatism of the headteacher and the progressive idealism of the priest, all the time struggling to find her own way.

After all that though I was a little disappointed by the ending, I was sort of hoping for a little more ambiguity after 90 minutes of doubting.