the DVD box of Doubt Doubt: The opportunity to hear the directing choices explained makes the film worth another look. Buena Vista Studios Home Entertainment
 

by Linda Holmes

Doubt was an apparently Oscar-hungry film, as its December 25 release date suggested.

Starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, and dealing with the issue of child abuse in the Catholic church, it was hard to imagine a film more naturally geared to an awards audience.

When it came Oscar time, though, all four major actors in the film -- Hoffman and Streep, along with Amy Adams and Viola Davis -- were nominated for their work, and John Patrick Shanley was nominated for the screenplay he adapted from his own play.

But the movie wasn't nominated for Best Picture. Your four big performances are all nominated, and your script is nominated, and you don't get a Best Picture nomination? That makes suspicion fall on the direction -- which Shanley also handled, and which was indeed one of the more widely criticized aspects of the film. (Bob Mondello, for instance, mentioned Shanley's "fussy directorial notions.")

That's why it's so wonderful that Shanley alone provides the audio commentary on the just-released DVD. You will hear him explain or at least acknowledge some of the very choices that were criticized, including his use of unusual angles, attention-grabbing lighting, and endless weather metaphors.

What John Patrick Shanley has to say in his own defense, after the jump...

(In one lovely, unguarded moment, a gentle breeze blows leaves around the feet of Viola Davis, and he says something like, "That's the real wind, we didn't do that." And then there is a mighty, over-the-top near-gale that storms around Meryl Streep seconds later, and he says -- perhaps a little sheepishly -- "We did that.")

The film is very much worth watching, both for the performances and for the chance to debate the ambiguity. But even if you've seen it, it's also worth seeing the DVD if you're interested in debates about directing, because Shanley is very willing to engage a lot of the questions -- about the "Dutch angles" that so many people found distracting, and why he thinks his restraint with them may have actually hurt him -- in a way that actually feels enlightening.

Too often, commentaries collapse into storytelling or lecturing; this one, which was clearly done after the critical response had at least begun to roll in, genuinely represents a thoughtful person talking about artistic choices others have criticized.

In fact, in some ways, the commentary is more interesting than the movie.

categories: Movies

2:49 - April 8, 2009

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