"Doubt" is full of certain performances - CinemaDave

This weekend marks the first football withdrawal weekend, the “off” weekend before the Superbowl. Fortunately as South Florida residents know, we can find other cool diversions. This weekend the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival's Cinema Paradiso will be hosting a special screening of **Wind Across the Everglades,” a film shot in South Florida that featured heavyweight contender Tony Galento, the Seminole Indian Tribe and leading man, Christopher Plummer. Plummer will be in attendance to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award this Saturday, January 24 at 6PM. (For more information about ticket prices, call (954) 525 FILM.) Film Scholar Forster Hirsch will moderate a discussion and perhaps we can learn if Christopher Plummer really thinks **The Sound of Music*** is really **The Sound of Mucus.**

Released on the silver screen in 1965 Anno Domini, **The Sound of Music** has become an annual television event each holiday season. The mid 1960s is also the setting for new movie, **Doubt,** starring Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Unlike **The Sound of Music** which presented the way the Roman Catholic Church ought to be, **Doubt** presents the church in all scandal and innuendo.

Father Flynn (Hoffman) becomes the pastor of a church community with a catholic school. The reformer Flynn runs afoul of Principal Sister Aloysius (Streep), a woman who enjoys being the fearful ogre to middle school children. The Pastor and the Principal butt heads on policy and procedures, related to student affairs. This contest of wills is witnessed by young Sister James (Adams), who learns how certainty can be as destructive as doubt.

**Doubt** will fulfill ticket buyers desire to see actors chew up scenery with conviction. From John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize winning play, the performances of Streep, Hoffman and Adams make the author's words comes alive. Actors of the caliber of Hoffman and Streep can underplay the following lines of dialog and make it seem like a high tech lynching;

“Father Flynn: Where is your compassion?
Sister Aloysius: Nowhere where you can get at it.”

If **The Sound of Music** is for the heart, then **Doubt** is for the head. **Doubt** stays with you long after seeing it. **Doubt** is not merely a slam of the Roman Catholic Church and the pedophilia scandals, the conflicts relate to anybody who has worked in a corporation and/or the educational system.