When in "Doubt"

When I saw a trailer for the Meryl Streep movie “Doubt” I was turned off. You could just tell what a movie about accusations of sexual misconduct at a Catholic school would be all about.

But then, reading reviews, I started to wonder. Maybe it was doable, after all.

After seeing it last night, I can say that the movie is a miracle. No, the miracle is not the acting of Streep as the Catholic high school principal nun or Philip Seymour Hoffman as the priest that the nuns suspect is abusing a young high-school boy. Make no mistake. Their peformances were excellent. No, the miracle is the screen-play by writer-director John Patrick Shanley. The plot beautifully lived up to its title.

(Plot spoilers ahead) Did Father Flynn actually abuse the boy? We never know for sure. Is the authoritarian go-by-the-rules style of Sister Aloysius a relic of the Stone Age? The movie does not say. Is Father Flynn a practiced liar? Who knows? Was Aloysius right to pursue Flynn out of the parish? And what good did it do if he just gets shifted to another parish and another school? Good question. The movie, miraculously, doesn’t tell us what to think.

We also get charming cultural touches. We see the celibate nuns eating in solemn silence under the baleful eye of Aloysius; but the celibate priests laugh and smoke at their meal.

I’ll tell you. Just when you think that Hollywood cannot be redeemed, Hollywood comes up with a movie called “Doubt”that really deserves to be called a triumph.