Movie Review—Spotlight

Spotlight

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.