Toronto Star: Doubt: Magnificent Adaptation

By Peter Howell
Toronto Star
Excerpt
December 12, 2008

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself," says the FDR quote neatly written on a nun's blackboard, but the corrosive piety of Doubt presents a far more insidious threat.

In magnificently adapting his award-winning play from stage to screen, writer/director John Patrick Shanley has retained its most unsettling questions: Who can we trust? Is morality absolute?

He invites us to judge, but then carefully lays out reasons why our verdict might be wrong, even tragically so. He wants us to think, something that runs counter to blind devotion.

One of the two antagonists in the film is committing evil in the guise of good, or attempting to...

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