Doubt is Dialogue, Acting and ....Weather

[Colin]

Doubt is all Dialogue, Acting and Weather

There is no doubt. Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role and for Best Writing, Doubt is an acting tour de force.

Remember that name. John Patrick Shanley. He is the writer of only a dozen movies, but a few of them are quite good. He wrote Alive with Ethan Hawke, Joe Versus the Volcano with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and the sweetheart maker, Moonstruck with Nicholas Cage and Cher (Oscar for screenwriting).

The 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this Broadway play is all dialogue, acting, and weather. Cold weather. Cold northeastern winter weather. The kind that blows across your path, knocks down limbs in your way, obscures your vision and maybe makes you see things that aren’t there. The kind of hard wind that blows away the fine line dividing right and righteous, wrong and wronged. The kind of cold Meryl Streep exposes as Viola Davies offers up her son to the bare bones of stark truths.

“Doubt,” Hoffman’s character says, “can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.”

Just as Shanley did with the play, none of the other actors know if Father Flynn is guilty. Yet, the Spartan dialogue gives these accomplished angels their wings. Doubt floats with the power of their performances. Nary is a word wasted. Neither a look nor a glance spent unwisely.

With performances like Julia & Julie, Meryl Streep will soon be sweeping aside all other acting award records. Those who love her need look no further than Doubt for proof of her incredible talents.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis and John Patrick Shanley follow in her footsteps. They track her out of the warmth of what you think you know is right and good and into a shivering Bronx, dusted with unfeeling snow.

Love these lines! Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman)in Doubt: Well,I’m not going to let her keep thisparish in the dark ages! And I’mnot going to let her destroy myspirit of compassion! That I canlook at your face and know yourphilosophy. It’s kindness. There are people who go after yourhumanity, Sister, that tell you thelight in your heart is a weakness.Don’t believe it. It’s an oldtactic of cruel people to killkindness in the name of virtue.

There’s nothing wrong with love.

http://www.miramaxawards.com/uploads/Doubt_Script%5B1%5D.pdf

[theryugobuddy]

I thought this incredible --

How do you make a drama about clergy and educators exciting? Use dynamic actors...

I realized that I cheered for and was reviled by the four main actors, sometimes in the same scene. Hoffman and Streep really pull you in.

You can see how this was a play orginally, but its fleshed out so much by the performances that it makes a pure movie. So many 'play' movies are stale, but not Doubt.

And yes, I think he did it, I think.

I just saw "Flawless' with Philip Seymour Hoffman doing an outrageous drag queen with a stroke-debilitated Rober Deniro. If Hoffman can pull that off, and he does, he can do anything.