Let’s Get Some Nuns.

I saw Doubt yesterday, and while it is definitely not a movie I’d recommend to many teenagers such as myself, I thought it was fantastic. Brilliant.

I realize that the commercials don’t speak much about the story, which is awesome FYI, so I thought I’d give you a basic run-down. It’s after the break (for those that don’t care to know, but I knew as much as I’m going to say and it made the movie more uneasy and RAD at the same time), but I’ve got to talk about something else first.

The Trouble with Angels just might be my favorite movie. It’s from 1966 and I had never even heard of it until a few months ago when it came on at like 1:00 AM. I managed to stay awake for it, too, because it was that awesome.

It’s at least on par with Clue (Cluedo for you Canucks) and Jurassic Park, my other favorites. Silence of the Lambs is a separate category, I’m afraid.

Which brings me back to Doubt. If you’ve ever seen Silence of the Lambs, you’ll recognize that uneasy feeling of pure anticipation that you get throughout the film. Doubt has a bit of that, just in the right spots. I imagine that there would be less of it if you knew the basic plot (but not the ending, of course), but since I actually love that feeling, here it goes.

Doubt is about a nun/principal (Meryl Streep) who acuses the priest of the Catholic school over which she presides of abusing a boy at the school. It is set approximately a year after the assasination of JFK, so this wasn’t nearly as common as it is now. The movie presents both sides of their arguments pretty evenly, thus the viewer has no idea who is correct for almost the entirety of the movie (save for the ending, of course).

It’s really amazing how they take such an unlikeable, batty, witchy old nun and make her seem so amiable at times. Even without knowing if she was correct in her accusations I kept feeling drawn to her throughout the bulk of the film. I wanted her to be right, whether she was or not.

Doubt is just genius, guys. I highly recommend it if you can be reasonably mature. (It’s actually based on a play I have never seen called Doubt: A Parable.)