It’s a good year in film when you see a movie that affirms everything you love about the artform. Riveting story, great writing, strong direction and excellent acting from the cast. When every aspect of a film come together to create a work that is exceptional, it’s a reminder of why we love movies, why we want them to be great, why we invest a two-hour set of time (and more, if you read about the film before and after seeing it), why we care at the end of the year about which films are best and deserve awards.
Also reassuring and gratifying is when a film is being touted as the leading contender for the Best Picture Academy Award actually lives up to the hype and isn’t merely the best of a mediocre class of movies.
Perhaps you’ve already heard about Spotlight, based on rave reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival. Maybe you’ve saw the cast led by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber and John Slattery, and figured that might be a movie worth watching. Of course, a great cast doesn’t always equal a great movie. This isn’t one of those instances.
So while it may seem like I’m overselling Spotlight, I’m not sure it’s possible to do so. I can’t imagine seeing a better film this year, and if one is out there, then the next two months should be amazing. Obviously, whether or not you feel the same way will depend on your tastes. Maybe you prefer action movies or an experience that provides fun. But if you love a movie that tells its story well, keeps the pace going, provides some strong (yet not excessively flashy) visuals, and lets its actors work to the best of their abilities, Spotlight is going to hit all of your buttons.
If you’re not yet familiar with the film, the title refers to the investigative reporting unit of the Boston Globe known to devote months, even years, to a series of articles on a particular topic. Spotlight has enough of a reputation in Boston that just the mention of its name is enough to convey the seriousness of whatever series the team is working on, reflecting the quality of the work and information those stories uncover. In this case, the story that Spotlight’s three reporters and editor are working on is allegations of child sex abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church.
Since it’s been nearly 15 years since the Globe‘s investigation and this scandal has become relatively well-known in our culture, maybe you think you’ve already heard enough about this story. And for some of you, maybe just the cursory knowledge of priests sexually abusing young children is sufficient and you don’t feel like you need to see a movie about it, nor how widespread the practice and cover-up was within the Catholic Church — not just in Boston, but as the film details in a jarring end-credit sequence, throughout the world.
But Spotlight isn’t so much about the scandal itself. None of the abuse perpetrated is depicted on film, for instance, though we certainly see the harmful psychological effects it’s had on the victims who have come forward, only to have their efforts through legal means and the press continually ignored and defeated by a media and judicial system that’s afraid of taking on a deeply influential and cherished institution.
The script by director Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer takes great care to establish just how deep the roots of the church run in Boston. A majority of the population is Catholic and won’t take kindly to the Globe trying to dig up dirt on their church and its figures of authority. Everyone on the Spotlight team was raised Catholic and at least one of them hasn’t lapsed. In several of the shots by McCarthy and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, a church is seen in the background. That’s not the film trying to hit you over the head with visual cues. It’s just a fact of life in Boston. The cityscape is filled with churches.
A recurring conflict for one of the reporters, Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), is that her deeply religious grandmother lives with her and her husband, and would be shattered to know that not only is her granddaughter investigating the church, but also discovering some horrifying information about what the priests have done to children and the cover-up being perpetrated by bishops, cardinals and… well, how far up the chain does this go? Another of the reporters, Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), discovers that one of the residential treatment centers where abusive priests are sent while the church decides what action to take is in his neighborhood, increasing his urgency to unveil the scandal.
Spotlight is constructed more like a mystery or conspiracy thriller. What basically begins as an investigation into one priest, then what the reporters and editors figure will be a handful of others, grows into something much, much larger and incredibly more important. Can the team put together the story that needs to be told and find the necessary evidence to prove their reporting? Who do they need to talk to next, what court documents need to be unsealed, how many can corroborate a story and make the reporting air-tight? What obstacles will pop up to thwart the investigation, whether they be political, logistical, or moral?
Many have already written about what a testament this movie is to good journalism. And that’s true, but it doesn’t celebrate in a phony Yay, Journalism! manner like another recent film about the media, James Vanderbilt’s Truth. That film felt so one-sided and preachy in its portrayal of producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather as righteous when there were some very real questions to ask about personal politics and agendas that are never addressed sufficiently. The reporters in Spotlight are never held up as heroic figures, though they did stand up to an institution and the influence it held over a population.
Sure, they’re motivated by a need to uncover the truth, to expose abuse and arrogance of power, and by doing so, the team is fulfilling a civic obligation to its readers and a moral obligation to help past and future victims. But above all, the movie shows the hard work of good journalism. It’s not supposed to be easy. Phone calls are abruptly ended, doors are slammed in faces, threats are made, bureaucratic red tape piles up (sometimes for no other reason than a person behind a desk thinks his or her job is more important than it is), and editors will push reporters to dig harder when the story doesn’t go far enough.
Spotlight points out that the Globe itself is culpable in this scandal evolving to shocking proportions. Reporters and editors originally shirked their responsibility when it was initially presented. Sometimes, it takes an outside view, a fresh pair of eyes, to help reset expectations and remind people what they’re capable of doing. Keaton, Ruffalo and McAdams will likely get the majority of awards love this winter, but Schreiber as editor Marty Baron — who came to the Globe from the Miami Herald, and is regularly dismissed by those being investigated as having an outside agenda because he’s Jewish — provides the upright moral compass for this film. He’s the one who sees an underreported story and motivates his reporters to think bigger and aim higher.
Additionally, very uncomfortable conversations often have to take place because it’s the only way a story can be truthfully reported. One of the best scenes in the movie shows Pfeiffer interviewing a victim who explains what was done to him by a priest he had grown to idolize. Eventually, he uses language to soften the acts that occurred, something any of us would likely to do avoid getting too graphic, to prevent the conversation from becoming uncomfortable. But Pfeiffer stops him and tells him that it’s important to explain exactly what happened because it needs to be made explicitly clear that a crime took place. The gravity of the situation has to be properly conveyed.
Ultimately, yes, the point is made — whether it’s subtle or not is open to your interpretation — that newspapers are important, that this sort of journalism takes time, resources and support. And when those editions of the paper with the first story filed by Spotlight go out on the delivery trucks, it’s a victorious scene and the response is affirmation to the hard work that was done. No one can ignore the seriousness of what was uncovered. That goes for viewers of the movie too, who see how large this story became with title cards running before the closing credits.
Spotlight is hardly a feel-good or uplifting film. But it is inspirational in many ways, because it shows what another institution — the press — is capable of accomplishing. Like The Martian, this is a film about the best of us, to some extent. This is what our media is supposed to do for the population it serves. Obviously, it’s also about the worst of us and what can happen when power and authority go unchecked, and people who invested their trust and faith are terribly betrayed. All of this is conveyed by the filmmakers and actors involved, resulting in a marvelous movie absolutely worth your time and attention.