Politics, the Church, and Character:

Christian Ethics and the Movies

Reviewed by David A. Thomas,
Prof. of Rhetoric, Emeritus, University of Richmond[i]

Politics, the Church, and Character:
Frost/Nixon (2008) and Doubt (2008)

            Plays and movies are different dramatic media. Plays are meant for the stage, to be mounted before live audiences, preferably small enough to achieve a sense of intimacy between the viewer and the actors. Movies, as visual media, are meant for projection on large screens across a broader range of view.

            The audience experience of attending plays and going to the movies is qualitatively different. Plays tend to be focused on character; movies on action. It is difficult to transfer the psychological intensity of a play to the large screen, and equally hard to include cinematic spectacle and vast action on the stage. Once I saw the Tony Award Broadway musical production of Titanic in NYC, and I swear they sank that enormous boat right there on the stage. But that was a $10 million production! There’s a reason why Shakespeare’s plays located all the sweeping battle scenes off stage, to be talked about by the characters on stage after the fact.

            The very talkiness of plays is one of the hurdles that screen writers and directors have to deal with when they attempt to adapt a hit drama into a movie, as in the movies, Frost/Nixon and Doubt. Ticket buying audiences are hard to lure into the Cineplex to see an intense drama.[ii] That, among other reasons, is why there are so few commercially successful translations of the best plays. The writer must figure out how to move some of the story outdoors, where visual scenes of crowded city streets, or majestic mountain scenery, can be injected, just for the movie audience. Some of my movie buddies like to rate films by counting car chases and explosions.

            The intimacy of plays invites the viewer to become engaged at deeper psychological levels. A good action movie pumps up the adrenalin level, but a good drama impels you to have to think about it. Indeed, a comment I often hear from people is, “I only go to the movies to be entertained. I don’t like movies that make you think.” Box office results reflect that sentiment.

            Frost/Nixon was originally a 2006 British play by dramatist Peter Morgan, and moved to Broadway for over 100 performances in 2007. Frank Langella, playing Nixon, won the Tony Award for Best Actor. Ron Howard adapted the play for the screen, with the same two lead actors. Michael Sheen (think of Tony Blair in Elizabeth) played the David Frost role. The story is about the TV interviews that Frost conducted with former President Richard Nixon after his pardon in 1977, which culminated in Nixon’s reluctant admission that he had indeed abused his power in office and committed wrongdoing.

            The script revolves around the actual transcript of the TV interviews, thus the production has a very authentic feel. Before the final credits, there are brief interviews with some of the original advisers who had support roles. The heart of the drama is the conflict between two towering egos working in a sort of talk show boxing match between a nimble lightweight and a plodding ex-heavyweight champion. In their first three out of four interview taping sessions, Frost never lays a glove on Nixon. Only in the final round, about Watergate, does he penetrate Nixon’s defenses and score points, with telling effect.

            Most critics agree that despite the subject matter, Frost/Nixon is oddly non-political, i.e., our partisan attitudes are not a factor in our response to their intellectual combat. By the time this event aired originally, Nixon’s political career was already over. Frost was gambling his TV career (and his own savings) on this one shot at the American TV market. For both men, what was at stake was whether Frost had the interviewing and interrogation skills to force some kind of public admission from the elusive Nixon.

            Set in 1977, the story also depicts the dawning of TV’s power to influence public opinion, which neither Frost nor Nixon fully understood then, despite Nixon’s acute realization of the fact that his image during the TV debates with Kennedy were what did in his 1960 presidential election campaign.

            Doubt, like Frost/Nixon, was first a Broadway play. It ran for 525 performances between 2004 and 2006. It won numerous awards, including the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. The original playwright, John Patrick Shanley, adapted it for the screen. The movie starred two acting heavyweights, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, with strong supporting roles by Amy Adams as the young teaching nun caught in the middle, and Viola Davis as the boy’s mother. The story concerns an accusation that the parish priest, Father Flynn, molested an altar boy. The accuser is the parochial school’s principal, Sister Aloysius. In the script, the priest delivers two short but penetrating homilies: one on the valuable place of doubt in one’s faith, and the other about tolerance.

            The play ran as a long one-act drama, with the special feature that the cast remained on stage for an extended Q&A from the audience after each performance. A key gimmick to this drama is that the playwright intentionally does not reveal whether the priest is actually guilty of anything. As in real life, the priest can only deny the nun’s charges, but he cannot prove his innocence. In this case, he will not provide any explanations of his close relationship with the boy. Even at the play’s end, you are left in doubt. Sister Aloyisius’s suspicions are based on no direct evidence whatever, other than her intuition; yet she is absolutely certain of her rectitude. It’s all circumstantial and somewhat “thin,” but could there be some fire where there is smoke? Playwright Shanley whispers the “true” backstory to the actor-priest, with a vow not to reveal what he knows. He is under seal. Therefore, the facts remain shrouded in doubt, leaving room for argument.

            Neither of these movie adaptations of plays has much in the way of typical movie action sequences or background visual effects. Yet in both, the dialogue and character conflicts are riveting from beginning to end. Both movies succeed in “making you think.”

            Dramatic Elements and Christian Ethics. The elements of drama in classical tragedies fall into six basic elements: plot (action), characters (a protagonist and an antagonist in conflict), spectacle (the scene, or setting), diction (language), purpose (of the playwright), and music (the Greek chorus in the classics, the sound track now). The major difference between movies and plays as dramatic forms is in the emphasis they give to these elements. Movies focus on plot or action (what happens next, show don’t tell). Plays focus on character, especially, the underlying values in conflict between the characters. When it comes to understanding why the hero and the villain act as they do, characters are always motivated in well-wrought plays. Audiences identify with or against their motives, and judge them as either just and moral, or unjust and to be booed and hissed—and/or fired and/or jailed.

            In Doubt, readers of this journal will be drawn to the conflicts between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius on more than one level. First, it is possible that the priest is being unfairly accused of a seriously vile act which, if true, would destroy him as a priest forever. Anyone who has ever been involved in, or around, a similar situation, even an alleged sexual harassment incident, can become viscerally engaged in Father Flynn’s dilemma over how to respond to such a charge.

            Second, Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius represent polar opposite values in terms of Vatican II. He is a progressive who strives to move the church and the school forward socially and theologically. She is a traditionalist who sees her duty as being to protect and maintain the conservative status quo. In large part, this secondary conflict provides fuel to Sister Aloysius’s motives to want to destroy this charismatic priest who threatens her worldview. In principle, these contending values extend readily to analogous kinds of arguments between conservatives and liberals (or moderates, in some churches).

            If you conduct “faith and movie” discussion groups, or use movies as teaching aids, both Doubt and Frost/Nixon are excellent choices. However, Frost/Nixon runs longish at two hours, leaving less time for group participation afterwards. Also, it is rated R for language (Nixon’s primarily).

            With regard to Doubt, it is difficult to imagine any adults seeing this movie and not strongly wanting to discuss it.