I saw this movie knowing virtually nothing about it (and if you’d like to do the same, then: (1) it’s a good character study that feels like a play but does not suffer from that at all; (2) the acting is great: Streep does her usual superb job; Amy Adams is extremely cute as a naive young nun; Philip Seymour Hoffman does a great job at the fulcrum of the film’s eponymous uncertainty; and (3) spoiler alert – stop reading now).

The movie was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley from his play, and takes place at a Catholic school where Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier (!), the school’s principle, Adams plays Sister James, a sweetly innocent history teacher, and Hoffman is the parish priest. Or some kind of priest. I don’t know how Catholic works, so parts of the movie were like watching a National Geographic special about a tribe with peculiar clothes and rituals. Sister Aloysius gives a clue to Sister James (that went totally over my head) to be on the look out for shenanigans at the school. Sister James, innocent though she may be, picked up that there might be something funny going on with the Father Flynn. When the school’s one black student returns from a call to the rectory (no pun intended) acting peculiarly and with the smell of alcohol on his breath, the two nuns suspect the priest of molestation. While I had anticipated a rather subtle and intricate series of baits and traps, the movie moves directly into open confrontation between the nuns and the priest. The evidence, such as it is, has both evil and innocent explanations. Through nothing more elaborate than artful dialog, the movie forces us from one side of the issue to the other and thus to consider the elusive nature of conviction, the effects of accusations (whether they are well-founded or not), and the inescapability of doubt.