Doubt
Scandal: Seemingly sensible (black) mother mechanically turns the other cheek upon learning her son may be being sexually abused by a priest?
The Issue: No matter how you slice it, Viola Davis' stunning performance as the beat-down, mind-blowingly non-redemptive mother; a role that is supposed to draw sympathy and pose a logical response for her dilemma, is rooted to the fear of her abusive husband and her (looks-like-he-may-be-gay) young son. But what mother would stay entrenched in such denial, as to put her son in what could be harm's way -- without being reflective? Even as Meryl's Sister Aloysius screams at her to wake up to the possibility of molestation, what other onscreen mother would be that blind? Perhaps the other black mother role awarded at the Oscars in recent times: Halle Berry's in Monster's Ball. Hmm...
What the Press is Saying: "You see, the young man’s gay and therefore a social outcast beaten by his homophobic father, and so awful is all of this that maybe the best option left for him is at the hands of a sympathetic, forty-something, molesting predator. To her credit Sister Aloysius is horrified, but Sister Aloysius is portrayed in the film as her own kind of monster. So our sympathies are quite obviously supposed to be with a working class black mother stuck in an abusive household desperate to do anything to help her boy ... The film’s defenders will call this turn of plot, complicated, nuanced, realism … anything but what it is, monstrous." -- John Nolte, Big Hollywood
Leave it alone?: Viola's Mrs. Miller is having a hard time: her husband may "kill" her effeminate son whose already had to leave one school, or the nice priest with certain tendencies may be molesting her possibly gay son. Maybe her inability to see that both sides are potentially equal in danger has to do with her shock?
Wrongness-meter: 3.5 out of 5 stars
KEEP READING: Animated films chance at Best Pic?