MOMENTS OF “DOUBT” IN FAITH

LOST and the Mrs. Have seen two current films that are busily racking up the viewership and jostling for Oscar position among the years’ best. Both feature the Church prominently – woven in throughout their stories and in the lives of the main characters.
In “Doubt” the Church is really the Central character in the story. As in what is the church, and does anyone really own it, or claim entitlement to do so? what is or should be its role in confronting society’s wrongs, and can it effectively do so if it is besieged by its own wrongdoers? Can anyone know someone else’s heart for certain, or is the realm of the conscience too inherently and deeply personal to be susceptible to the probing of a third party – even one as single mindedly insistent as Sister Aloysius?

The film is a terrific period peace for any one who came of age in the Church in the 1960’s and 70’s, and watched its elder clergy struggle with the changing focus away from pray,pay and obey to trying to deal with more abstract notions like racial equality and enduring prejudice, or sexuality, or even the gender inequality inherent within the Church’s clergy. All are addressed or at least examined in part by the film, and its terrible beauty is that it compels viewers to look at all sides of the story, with the understandable potential for two close people to reach starkly different conclusions about the central fight in the plot – is or is not there something unseemly going on?



The other film, “Gran Torino” is a sad affair for many reasons. First, it is obvious that this will – or certainly should be – Clint Eastwood’s last film in front of a camera. The man whose career has personified the “vigilante justice” strand of American thought is looking every bit of his seven plus decades these days, and despite his sveltness, he’s no longer a dashing leading man. (Are you paying attention, Stallone? No more “Rocky’s, please). Secondly, the story line is about redemption and atonement – neither of which could be too far away in a film which opens with the audience meeting “Walt Kowalsky” in the middle of a Catholic Mass.

The neighborhood that Walt lives in is another cause for sadness. Older homes, only a few taken care of, the rest left to fester and display their advancing age. The disconnect between Walt and his own sons, and between Walt and his spoiled grandchildren is also cause for some sad reflection, if not a little introspection, as well.

What is most fascinating about the film is not Walt’s similarity to someone each of us probably knows well (LOST’s older brother comes to mind for some, for others its another relative or friend), or his gradual acceptance and warming to his neighbors; what is fascinating is the interplay between Walt and the young “padre” – and the corresponding growth each experiences, as well as the shallowness of Walt’s “confession” when compared with the real festering sore in the depth of his conscience, or how he chooses his own act of penance and contrition for it. Predictably sad as the ending may be, there is cause for uplifting thought, too. All longstanding wounds do not putrify, they can be, with deliberate and sustained effort, cleansed and healed.

Ignore any critic who says otherwise. See them both, and do it in close proximity.