An Unfinished Life

In this film, a past tragedy has determined the present trajectory of related lives. 

Moving, tender, and quiet, it's a film about family; about grief and blame; acceptance and forgiveness; friendship and freedom.

Filmed in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and set in a wide valley with surrounding mountain ranges, both the photography and scenery are breathtaking.

Particularly admirable is its theme of respect for nature, how wild things should remain free, and how we humans should understand and accept the inherent nature of wild animals.  To quote a line, "Bears should not be punished for doing what bears do."  Simplistic and out of context here, nonetheless, the line reminds us of the countless times we've seen wild things caged or degraded or killed for behaving exactly as we should have expected them to behave.

Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman play the main characters with a remarkable little actress, Becca Gardner, playing Lopez' and Redford's 11-year-old daughter and granddaughter, respectively.

In the DVD bonus features, Morgan Freeman made very complimentary remarks about Jennifer Lopez.  He said she was a wonderful actress and "It isn't her fault she has so many gifts.".  Watching him speak, I had the impression that he was amazed at her acting talent. 

What a wonderful experience it was to sit and watch this touching story unfold.  Its style and content are from a kinder, gentler era; yet it's painfully realistic, a movie for mature souls who've had some life experience.  I'm surprised it was green-lit so recently.  It opened in 2005.

An Unfinished Life is a Lasse Hallstrom film, (Chocolat; The Cider House Rules; The Shipping News) which says it all for film buffs.  Swedish Director Hallstrom said with a self-deprecating smile, that he could relate to the people and emotions in this novel-based film because they were such that "even a Swede could understand".

An Unfinished Life is bittersweet, and lingers gently in the mind.

Doubt

Doubt:  Used as a noun it means uncertainty; as a verb it means to question, to hesitate to believe, or to distrust.  All usages apply in this namesake film.

Two cinema greats, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, engage in a complex war of wills that involves suspicion and the challenging and abuse of authority.  Doubt depicts how their individual belief systems, personalities and tenacity shape and filter their interaction with each other within the early '60s strict-but-changing confines of the fiercely hierarchical Roman Catholic Church.  A third character's related, but unimaginable, belief eventually implodes within this conflict.

Doubt contains brilliant dialogue, but austere sets, which reflect its stage-play origin and its occurrence within a Catholic school.  Streep plays the Catholic school principal, an authoritarian nun who suspects school-associated priest Hoffman of sexual abuse of a student.  Streep's character verbally engages the priest in continual thrust and parry, challenging his manner of student interaction and hoping to provoke him into self-incrimination.  Amy Adams plays a youthful, uncertain nun who is Streep's sounding board.

We who enjoy stage plays appreciate minimal settings and the power of dialogue, but the sparse and bleak surroundings in this film, while appropriate to the story, may present a challenge for some movie fans.

I have one criticism, and it concerns the portrayal of Streep's character as unrelentingly cold, self-righteous and arrogant.  For me, the film would have been more effective had it accorded her slightly more warmth and, yes, doubt.   However, nuns like this did exist, and I know this from long-ago personal experience. The playwright, John Patrick Shanley, adapted his play for the screen and directed the film, so I must assume the characterization was deliberate. 

Doubt is provocative, disturbing and challenging.  It will stay with you long after the ending, which I found satisfying but without mystery or ambiguity, unlike others who've seen it.

For those who enjoyed it, or have an interest in the mysteries of faith, I suggest another movie, Agnes of God, adapted for the screen by John Pielmeier from his play about a religious concept and a crime within a remote Quebec convent.  It features Jane Fonda as a court-appointed psychiatrist; Anne Bancroft as Mother Superior of the cloistered order; and Meg Tilly as Agnes, a devout young nun. 

The intense verbal sparring between Fonda's character and the Mother Superior is intellectually and religiously challenging.  It causes the logical, skeptical mind to question and wonder: "If we believe it happened once, why not again?"  I've pondered and searched for the conclusion the playwright intended us to reach, but it remains beyond my grasp, even after all these years and many repeat viewings.  Perhaps this was his intention.  Doubt and logic vs. faith.

Directed by Norman Jewison, Agnes of God is riveting.  Superb in acting, story-telling and cinematography, this 1985 film is honest, fair, provocative and powerful in its presentation of suspicion and doubt.