| Spotlight |
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by Peter J. O'Connell
Spotlight.
Released: Nov. 2015. Runtime: 128 mins. Rated: R for some language including
sexual references.
When Marty Baron (played by Liev Schreiber) arrives in 2001
as the new managing editor of the Boston
Globe, it's expected that he'll probably shake up the newspaper, which is
undergoing changes of ownership and some financial difficulties, Baron does that, but he also does something
that eventually shakes up more than a newspaper—it shakes up the oldest
existing institution in Western civilization, the Roman Catholic Church, the
world's largest religious denomination. Spotlight
is the true account of how journalists in pursuit of a news story brought about
this historic development, one that eventually had, so to speak, global
ramifications.
Boston is a sports-crazed city with historically a huge
Irish-Catholic population. Baron is not from Boston, is not Irish, is not
Catholic—he is not even a sports fan! But his outsider's eye leads him to
suggest that the Globe's small team
of investigative reporters for long-term projects—known as the Spotlight
team—take a fresh look at scattered reports over the years about sexual abuse
of children by Catholic clergy and particularly at the response of the church
hierarchy, headed by Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou), to such abuse.
The somewhat quirky but talented team members—Mike Rezendes
(Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy
James)--all with Catholic backgrounds, take to their task with energy. After
all, they don't want to lose their jobs as Baron shakes up the paper! The team
is supervised by “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), who is also active in the
investigation, and Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery). Bradlee, Jr., is the son
of the legendary Ben Bradlee, who was editor of the Washington Post at the time of Woodward and Bernstein's classic
reporting on the Watergate scandal, the subject of the 1976 cinema classic All the President's Men.
The circle of truth cast by the Spotlight team's dogged
interviewing and arduous cross-checking of records expands and expands,
exposing more and more evil—from one pedophile priest and his victims to scores
of priests and hundreds of victims; from seeming simple incompetence on the part
of the hierarchy to something approaching a systematic cover-up conspiracy;
from complicity in the cover-up by a few police, political and judicial
figures, and lawyers to corrupt actions—and inaction—by many in those
professions over many years. Even the Globe
itself over the years may have become too cozy with the hierarchy.
Tom McCarthy, director and co-writer, shapes Spotlight in a concise, economical way
that belies the fact that the film is slightly longer than most. He infuses it
with steadily mounting tension, even in such
matters as the poring over of dusty archives. And he avoids the hoary
tropes that often appear in “expose: films. There are no strangers lurking in
the shadows, no cars following too closely at night, no threatening phone
calls, no bullets through windows. But the fact that there is potential
danger—that of ostracism of the reporters and financial damage to the paper—is
made clear.
Spotlight lacks
cinematographic pyrotechnics, but one visual technique is subtly effective.
Almost every outside scene has a Catholic church or institution somewhere in
it, thus establishing the nearly ubiquitous presence of the Church in the city.
McCarthy's greatest achievement, though, is in his casting. He has created a
true ensemble, a team of talented players working together, to portray the team
of reporters working together. No sooner does one think, as one will, that
so-and-so deserves an Oscar than one thinks “but so does so-and-so and
so-and-so and so-and-so.” The actors meld with their characters and with each
other. And the script by McCarthy and his co-writer, Josh Singer, provides just
enough indications of the characters' off-the-job lives to make us see them as
full persons but does not lead us astray from the main story into side stories.
That main story is, of course, an enormously important one.
Amid the current indignation felt by much of the public about perceived media
bias and laxity, Spotlight shows that
sometimes journalists can fulfill a spiritual role more than churchmen do. Good
journalism, such as that of the Spotlight team, embodies the Biblical maxim:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
“Footnotes” to the
film:With regard to the casting of Spotlight,
a Web site has placed photos of the actors in the movie next to photos of the
actual persons whom they portray. The physical resemblances are truly striking.
(2) In theaters shortly before the release of Spotlight was another film about journalism, Truth, starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather. The film deals with
the notorious episode during the Presidential campaign of 2004 in which Rather
displayed on TV a document, purportedly from the 1970s, indicating that George
W. Bush was derelict in his National Guard duties at that time. In actuality,
the document was quickly exposed by knowledgable members of the public as
obviously inauthentic. Its typography and military jargon were not those of the
decade of the 1970s but from the 1990s or later. Rather, in effect, defended
the document as “perhaps not authentic” but “expressive of a larger truth”
about Bush. CBS' firing of Rather eventually followed. Truth, instead of focusing on the many interesting story
possibilities that might have been followed up about the inauthentic document
and its exposure, focuses on a purported political/corporate conspiracy to
silence the liberal Rather. This claim is as inauthentic as the dubious
document. The title of the movie is a complete misnomer. Robert Redford, who
played Bob Woodward in All the
President's Men, should be ashamed of his involvement in this meretricious
movie, meretricious both in theme and technique. Redford is a liberal activist,
but liberalism should be expressed without lying in the way that Truth does.
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