"Child Abuse Suspected Cloud", a film whose translation was ruined.
Its original English name is Doubt-Doubt.
Obviously, this original name is more appropriate because it describes the essence of the word "doubt".
What is the doubt?
Suspicion is a kind of confusion.
It is sandwiched between "belief" and "unbelief," and is in a dilemma, unable to form any firm judgment.
It is extremely painful to live in doubt.
In order to interpret "doubt" more accurately, director John Patrick Shanley deliberately set the story in an age full of suspicion.
It was 1964, and the United States was in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. Just the previous year, President Kennedy was assassinated and, coupled with the prevalence of the black power movement, the entire society was in violent turmoil.
And the place where the story takes place is the place where “suspicion” should not exist the least—the Catholic School of St. Nicholas.
Father Flynn was accused by Sister Aloisius, accusing him of wrongdoing with Donald, a black student.
The film revolves around this child molestation case, and gradually reveals the true face of everyone and even the church.
I believe you will experience several swings during the entire viewing process.
For a while I believed that Father Flynn was innocent, and for a while I suspected that he had really made a mistake.
The truth was not revealed until the end of the film.
It is said that during the filming, the director only told the truth to the actor who played the priest, and no one else knew the truth. He did this precisely to immerse all actors in a deep suspicion, so as to convey this "suspicion" to the audience to the greatest extent.
There is no doubt that the director did it.
He succeeded in keeping every viewer trapped in doubt and unable to dismiss it.
At the same time, another question began to emerge: what is the truth? Is it absolutely objectively true? Or what do we ultimately choose to believe in?
The truth is hard to know.
The "unknowable" of the truth is not because of how complicated the truth itself is, but because it is "people" who are trying to clarify the truth, and talents are the most complicated.
This so-called "child prostitution case" was entirely caused by chasing after the wind.
It was just a sentence from Sister James—“Donald, a black student, was drunk and looked a little flustered after he returned from Father Flynn’s residence.”—The old nun immediately decided that Father Flynn must have committed something wrong. She went after her and began to try her best to prove her judgment.
In this, we see that what hangs above the "truth" is a complicated pattern of interests.
It is above all a kind of " office politics ".
The accusation of the old nun against Father Flynn was actually selfish.
The two of them happened to represent the two forces within the church.
The old nun is conservative and abstinent. She treats others and herself very harshly and can't get used to the new style of Father Flynn.
Therefore, she wanted to take down Flynn by using the "child prostitution case", just like a conservative liquidation of the reformists.
For the old nun, the "truth" had long been anchored by "prejudice", and what she was waiting for was that Flynn would show his feet one day.
So what about Father Flynn?
On the surface, he is very enlightened, wise, and kind to others.
But on the other hand, he smokes, drinks, feasts, and makes vulgar jokes, which is very different from the traditional image of a priest.
There is only a shallow dividing line between his enlightened and casual, open-minded and indulgent.
This also makes his behavior very suspicious.
What's more complicated is the so-called "victim" side.
In such an era when apartheid was just beginning to collapse, Donald, as the first black student in the Catholic School, was often bullied by white students.
What's more, all signs indicate that he is still a homosexual.
Such a weak position makes Donald have extremely complicated feelings for Father Flynn who is willing to protect him: there is love, gratitude, worship, and a desire to continue to be protected.
As for Donald’s mother, in the dialogue with the old nun, she bluntly stated her only appeal in such a special age: "I just don’t want the things you said to hurt my child. Just keep going. After six months, until graduation, my son will be able to attend a better high school."
It is everyone who creeps around the "truth" that, out of their own interests, secretly makes their own rulings that make the "truth" continue to deviate from the original track until they fall into the endless nothingness.
However, is this what the director wants to talk about?
Do not.
What the director wants to talk about is deeper than this.
I remember that at the beginning of the film, Father Flynn told a story in the sermon, to the effect that: a man is drifting on the sea in a lifeboat. At first, he relied on the stars in the sky to identify the direction and headed towards home, but for dozens of days later. Here, the stars no longer appeared, and this person was completely panicked. He didn't know whether the direction he was heading was still correct, and he was not sure whether the stars existed in the first place, or if he was in distress.
Obviously, this is an allegory about the " crisis of faith ".
It tells the embarrassment that faith has encountered in this era: can long-standing faith still guide people in the present?
Or, in other words, does the belief created based on the plight of the predecessors still have the same meaning in the present?
This is a sharper "suspicion" raised by the film.
This suspicion directly pierces the most solid foundation of "belief."
What exactly is faith?
Faith is to believe without doubt.
But in the film, this "suspicion" was first brought up by a priest.
After a whole story about "doubt", the old nun finally forced the old nun to say something similar: "I'm not sure, I also have doubts."
The old nun was originally the most steadfast believer.
But at the end of the story, she also had doubts.
what is the reason?
This first implies a critique of the church system.
Although in this "child prostitution case", Father Flynn was not convicted. But there is no doubt that he is a person with a prior record. In the previous five years, he has changed three places to be a priest.
The film also implicitly expressed the fact that he had an affair with the nun before him.
After experiencing this suspected child molestation case, he left again.
As before, he still has not been dismissed, and he has not been demoted but promoted, becoming a priest in another parish.
This is ironic in itself.
It is even saying that the church has become a kind of sanctuary. It makes people's sins easily forgiven through repentance, so sins become a kind of peace of mind, just because "God will forgive me."
It is precisely because of this that the old nun said that sentence: "I also have doubts."
For this sentence, you can understand that he feels that he may have wronged Godfather Flynn.
But a more likely explanation is that at this time she has doubted the "existence of God".
The reason is not only because of the church, but also because of herself, because she lied.
In order to prove that Flynn was guilty, she lied to have called the nuns of the church where Flynn was originally located, and obtained important evidence. But in fact, she didn't make that call.
For this reason, she initially argued that she would not hesitate to lie in order to maintain God's justice.
But then I thought about it, it was precisely this behavior that completely shattered her belief.
Because she chose to lie, it was actually tantamount to admitting that justice could not be achieved in a way that conformed to God's will.
Isn't this the most serious crisis of faith?
Watching "Child Abuse Suspect" is my most exciting experience in recent times.
Someone always asks me: the difference between genre films and literary films.
I think the most significant difference between the two is: genre films must simplify life, while literary films often restore the complexity of life.
From this perspective, "Child Abuse Suspicious Cloud" is undoubtedly an excellent literary film.
It tells the unknowable truth, and at the same time tells something more terrifying than the lack of truth: people lose their faith and no longer choose to believe.
Then the world will fall into eternal night.
Fortunately, before that, there is still the light of the movie, illuminating us.
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