'Doubt'

A parish priest stands in front of his flock, sets his features sternly, and then launches into his weekly sermon. He tells of a woman who goes to confession, and asks her priest if gossip was a sin. Of course, replies the priest, and for penance, he instructs the woman to go onto the roof of her house and cut apart a pillow with a knife. This she does, with feathers flying everywhere. The next time she goes to confession, the priest then tells her to go around her neighborhood and gather up all the feathers. But father, replies the woman, that's impossible.

That, says the priest, is gossip.

Delivering this sermon is Philip Seymour Hoffman, in fine form, in the film "Doubt," a sort of Catholic-school "Rashomon" by writer and director John Patrick Shanley, based on his award-winning play of the same name. Shanley's film explores the deadly power of innuendo and a very postmodern topic — the impossibility of knowing the truth. But he approaches the subject in a populist, quotidian way. The problem with "truth" — and Shanley rams this home in the film — is that people tend to believe what they want to believe: Addicts refuse to admit they have a problem; black America thought O.J. was innocent; Bernie Madoff sure seemed like a nice, smart guy; and the American Catholic Church spent decades denying there was sexual abuse going on.