Straightway throughout the Libyan cities flies rumor;--the report of evil things than which nothing is swifter; it flourishes by its very activity and gains new strength by its movements; small at first through fear, it soon raises itself aloft and sweeps onward along the earth. Yet its head reaches the clouds. . . . A huge and horrid monster covered with many feathers: and for every plume a sharp eye, for every pinion a biting tongue. Everywhere its voices sound, to everything its ears are open.

Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes: Fama malum quo non velocius ullum; Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo; Parva metu primo; mox sese attollit in auras, Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubilia condit. . . . . Monstrum, horrendum ingens; cui quot sunt corpore plumae Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu, Tot linquae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.

                                                                                                                                                             VIRGIL    

 

 

2. But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind--the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I wandered farther from thee, and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications--and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my tardy Joy! Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow, in proud dejection and restless lassitude. Confessions; Book II, Chapter II 

                                                                                     AUGUSTINE                                                                  

If some of us walk long enough with someone who happens to have a perceptible limp; we might begin to notice that we are limping a bit.   Monkey madness I suppose.

I caught this movie called DOUBT the other day. It grabbed me. I never follow Oscar night and I rarely read critiques of recent films--though I love to read  reviews of older films to see how wrong critics can be.

I discovered that Meryl Streep, Philip Seymore Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis were all nominated for academy awards for their portrayals in that film. So I can tell you that I was quite taken by this film without finding myself walking with a sympathetic limp.

The movie gave me pause to reconsider some things I have recently read concerning the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope and clerical pedophilia. But I was so moved by all the messages coming from this cinematic play.  

It was written as a play and it almost qualifies under Aristotle's unification theory as stated in his Poetics.  This movie has the unities of time, place, and action. The unities are all in line but the camera gets to maneuver with certain aspects of action that a play just cannot do. The camera can take you to the eyes one character and move on to some other frame while dialogue continues. The director's job is to 'clue you in'. The eye movements alone are enough to make me watch it several times.

The director and most probably the playwright certainly project the truism that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

I was 'raised' a Roman Catholic. When Grandma was around we all went to church. When my parents were pretending to be self sufficient, the boys were dropped off at church and then picked up again. Until the time came when we found ourselves on foot.

I went to Catechism because my dad could not afford the rent let alone the extra monies involved in sending us to Catholic School. But I would walk there and walk back home. I tried everything to hear the word of God. I served mass on Saturdays and I would fill in for the regular crew when someone failed to show up. The Word never came to me and I ended up the delightful atheist I have come to be.

The film Doubt begins with a 1964 view of a Bronx street in the early days of winter with the wind and the dead leaves and the hint of future snow.

After a quick scan of this Catholic Church & School, Hoffman is seen delivering a wonderful Sunday sermon on the subject of doubt.

The metaphor the priest uses is right on point for me, anyway. You are the skipper of a schooner and you are asea at night under cloud cover. You have the damn compass of course but no GPS and no radio. And you just do not have any idea where the fuck you are; which is what asea means after all, at least in the crosswords if not Word spellchecker.

What is wonderful about this sermon is that the cleric is attempting to demonstrate that if faith is supposed to somehow join us all together as one people, one congregation, or one family; so can doubt.  If you ever get into poetry of the late middle ages, you will find that using opposite concepts like this makes very fine prose or poetry.

One tome I am currently reading pulls a line from Marlowe concerning the wicked nun.

The beauty of this play is that is examines one dichotomy in life much better than one throw away line. The entire play is about doubt becoming a disjunctive force as well as a unifying reality.

Streep plays the run-of-the-mill ruler slapping disciplinarian that many of us knew in our youth.  But Streep could play anything, any role, and this truism cannot be disputed. There certainly are more depths, more layers concerning this mean and nasty nun than we might come upon in some Monty Python skit.

Streep knew men; in the biblical sense. Ha. She had been married and her husband died in the War. She knew the structure of the world and she knew men were in control; but there were measures that could be taken against men; measures that could be taken to control men; measures that could be taken to curtail certain evils in men; and measures that could be taken to punish certain men.

Streep believes in structure because without structure, anarchy reins.

So, as in any morality play, there is Streep's antithesis. I do not know where they dug up this Amy Adams (I just do not keep up with these things) but I have never witnessed a better performance of a naïve and newly vowed nun.

Adams has just finished her first quarter as a teacher and she looks like she is fourteen. She even has some blemishes on her pretty face and the costume she wears as a member of her local coven of nuns accentuates her purity of heart, soul and mind.

The 'event' that must be scrutinized by all concerned involves a newly admitted Black child into this all white Catholic School. The boy is caught drinking some of the sacred wine from the sacristy and there is a cover up by Hoffman as well as a lay person.

We learn that the boy is beaten and hated by his own father; we learn that his mother is a working mother attempting to find a way to cope; and we learn that the boy has homosexual tendencies--whatever that means.

His father hates him, the students at his previous school hate him and he has not one friend in his new school, except for the priest.

Streep is sure that there is a sexual relationship between Hoffman and this boy. The Novice wishes to think otherwise. The mother does not wish to think about the possibility of a sexual relationship between her son and the only man who has shown the boy any compassion in this lonely and threatening world.

As I watch the film develop I can sympathize with the mother a bit. An African American woman attempting to find a place in the Bronx middle class; a woman who may have been sexually abused as a child; a woman who is struggling just to keep it all together with an abusive husband and a child she loves very much...well it is difficult to judge her. What is a mother to do, indeed!!!

The priest denies it. Now Hoffman is confronted by Streep on two occasions during the play and I watched the eyes of both characters.

The first confrontation takes place with Streep, the Novice and the priest over tea. The eye movements of all three characters are a wonder to watch.

At any rate, see the movie. This blog is more like a diary for me and I could go on and on for another ten pages.

I came away with two 'conclusions' of sorts.

First, the movie is not in the least bit political for me. At times I just sit back and understand that there are religious/social structures over which I have no control. The Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, and even the Hindu/Buddhists claim much money and much power. I can rant about that power and money but if I have no control over the repub party how the hell would I ever have an effect on religions that claim three or four billion faithful and stretch back to the millennia that we cannot even measure?  

A certain number of clerics are pedophiles and the Church must do more to weed them out; to prevent them from poisoning the minds and bodies of our children. 

But as to the institutions themselves? What is, is; and what is not is not.

Second, I was so struck by one frame in one scene in this movie. The boy has been 'bumped' by some student purposefully and he falls to the floor along with his books. The priest stops and helps the boy up and holds him. It is pure sweetness.

Hoffman's character pleads with Streep and the Novice on separate occasions. His point is that people of faith cannot avoid risk. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety by reaching out and comforting someone, is beyond the void. It would be hell on earth.

Everyone would have to act like Sister Ratchet and conduct oneself at all times in a mean and strict and unloving manner toward all the children and any member of the opposite sex.

Expressing compassion, expressing sympathy and expressing love can become risky business.

Why did the priest move from parish to parish over a period of five years?  Is there any evidence of physical sexual contact between the priest and the boy?  Or any evidence of other similar encounters in other parishes?

Is Streep wishing that there was illicit conduct on the part of the priest just to get a chance to hurt men in general?

Is Streep afraid of expressing compassion or love because each expression brings her one step closer to anarchy?

Is Streep so steeped in a Freudian model of existence that she is certain that any feelings of compassion or sympathy or love must ultimately be sexual in nature?

The playwright can communicate wonders by not communicating. I know this is a cliché. But he does not answer these questions. There is no smoking gun. There is no Nixon/Rosenberg typewriter.

I included Virgil's description of Rumor because the priest gives another sermon discussing rumor.

He speaks of going home and grabbing a large knife and stabbing a pillow in front of an open window.  Once the feathers are borne upon the wind it becomes quite a chore to chase down all the feathers and gather them into the place they once belonged. The feathers seem rather Virgilian indeed.

Well that's my sermon for the day.