Doubt

Nominated for Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams), Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis), Best Supporting Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and Adapted Screenplay, Doubt is the story of a priest who is suspected of abusing a child in the parish school. Set in 1964, the film follows the developments from suspicion, to accusation, to resolution as the nuns attempt to handle a potential problem despite religious and societal obstacles.

As you can tell from the nominations, the acting is what sells this movie, and it's powerful stuff! Not surprising with such a good cast. The story is both simple and complicated, and you're never sure what really happened, only what was perceived to have happened. The characters' own confusion is mirrored by the cinematography as canted angles and graphic montage shots intersperse with regular perspective. That's a great trick of the trade and I loved seeing it used here to reflect the characters' doubts by forcing the viewer to alter their perspective to look at the shots.

We both liked this movie and didn't. It's depressing, Meryl Streep's character especially, though brilliantly played, is not at all likable, and there is no actual resolution. Which is clever in that it reinforces the message by leaving the viewer in doubt, but is also irksome for doing the same thing.

Except for our mothers, again, this is a film well worth seeing.