Like the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the film is set at a Catholic church and elementary school in an Irish-Italian parish in the Bronx, circa 1964, and centers on a battle of wills between Father Brendan Flynn (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Sister Aloysius Beauvier (played by Meryl Streep). Father Flynn is firm with the pupils at the school, but is also compassionate, tolerant and open-minded – a man who advocates “progressive education and a welcoming church.” His views and manner of handling the children are completely at odds with the devout Sister Aloysius’s suspicious, unyielding personality and desire to keep to the old, tried-and-true ways of doing things. (She thinks the song “Frosty the Snowman” is heretical and ballpoint pens are for the lazy. Enough said?)
Caught in the middle of the two is Sister James (played Amy Adams,) who is warm and na