Spotlight Reviews

To be honest, this movie was not really on my radar for a long time but since it won the Best Picture Academy Award, I was quite eager to check out the damned thing. Well, eventually, I thought it was a pretty good story, with some solid directing and a very strong cast (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup).  The realistic approach worked fine as well and it was really neat that they didn’t add any sub-plots about the romantic or family lives of the involved reporters. And, yet, somehow, the whole thing didn’t really blow me away. I mean, I do have a weak spot for the genre and I really loved ‘All the President's Men’ which was obviously an inspiration for this movie but, in this case, even though it was an interesting story, it never really grabbed me. That’s the tricky thing with such thrillers, right from the beginning, you actually know how it will end so the makers have to manage to find some other way to entertain or grab the interest of the viewers. In this case, since they took such a realistic approach, nothing really surprising or spectacular happens ever during this movie. Still, to conclude, even though it didn’t completely win me over, it was still a solid feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

       Before it was awarded the Best Picture Oscar, "Spotlight" was being touted as “All the President’s Men” all over again, but with a scandal most consider as even more taboo: the sexual abuse by Catholic priests on children. Normally, criticism about the Church is strictly policed. Protected by God-fearing politicians, who think its best just to look the other way. But, the days of misbehaving Catholic priests hiding behind God’s invincible barrier are over. Rogue, guerrilla journalism says they had it coming.

     But this is old news already. “Deliver Us From Evil,” directed by Amy Berg, a 2006 documentary on the subject was nominated for the Oscar and won the NY Film Critics Circle and Boston Film Critics awards. In it, there was no race to get the perpetrators to admit to the abuse, the truth was already on hand. The movie starts with a confession by one Father O’Grady. And in all fairness to Berg’s movie, it was already in on it before “Spotlight”, and more powerfully tackled the issue.

     That is why, seeing “Spotlight” didn’t really come as the big “revelation” to me, like most did, I suspect. And it was in seeing the documentary on catholic priests’ sexual abuse that a Hollywood movie with big-time actors, felt lukewarm. I even found it not as exciting as it should have been. As per the movie’s timeline, they were really in no hurry with their piece of story.

     Still, “Spotlight” is a good movie with inspired performances, most especially by Mark Ruffalo, who should have won by the way, and did what it’s supposed to do: educate everyone to the truth and with all daring, reveal the chink in the Church’s armor. A good movie by bringing back investigative journalism even though it is set in the late 70s to early 80s, making the issue even more period, further brought to my mind the question: why it took Hollywood this long to make this movie?

Spotlight, based upon the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose on sex abuse within the Catholic Church, is a film that takes a familiar story, but pulls back the curtain to reveal the blood, sweat, and groundwork it took to uncover it all. It presents Boston not as a sprawling city, but as a small-town mindset, heavily under control of the church and prone to closing ranks to protect its own. It would sound absurd if the text at the very end didn’t occupy three slides worth of cities with their own sex abuse scandals.

How could something like this have happened? Well, it’s easy to understand when you step back and look at the bigger picture. There’s an element of class issues at play here, with poorer sections being heavily involved and dependent upon the presence of a religious institution. If that institution has enough power in that area, it can easily hide behind its power to silence detractors and whistleblowers. I applaud these journalists for exposing this breach of conduct, and while it hasn’t completely reformed the institution, it has caused massive cracks to show.

In-between new revelations of just how deep this corruption goes, and well-paced potboiler elements, Spotlight allows for human faces to react to the horrors. While spilling out the skeletons of the local community’s closets sounds like a great way to endanger their careers and cause massive emotional fallout, they just keep going. By 2003, the Globe’s Spotlight team had published hundreds and hundreds of articles detailing survivor’s stories, names and locations of priests, and the in-house corruption that led to a constant reshuffling of clergy members.

There’s a complexity at work, but it never feels too hard to understand or too self-indulgent upon its own importance. As this small team of journalists stare down a massive problem, completely unaware of how deep it goes, they look for answers and where to place the blame. Each of them has a moment of awakening that there is no one place to lay the blame, that it extends to everyone, and dumb luck was the only thing keeping them from becoming a victim.

The ensemble is a tightly moving unit, with every player delivering solid work. What’s most refreshing is that no major scenes were added in which the actors could genuflect and emote to the heavens. It’s a quiet movie, filled with quiet, lived in performances with small moments that linger for their naked emotions and complex thoughts. Michael Keaton’s slow burn realization that this happened at his own high school, while he was a student no less, and he escaped through the happenstance of picking a different sport is a reminder of what a tremendous actor Keaton is. I feel as if he is undervalued, and such quiet work is no less effective or memorable than his larger fury in last year’s Birdman.

Orbiting him are Mark Ruffalo as a reporter to starts off curious and slowly goes manic as the case unfolds before him, Rachel McAdams as the quiet, sincere heart of the film, Brian d’Arcy James who recoils in horror as he learns just how close this threat is in his neighborhood. Ruffalo and McAdams have a wonderful scene where they discuss how the case is shaking them to their core, with McAdams listening intently, and reflecting on her inability to go to church with her grandmother anymore, afraid of how heartbroken she’ll be once the story is published. I believe the entire ensemble is award worthy, and it’s hard for me to single out any lone performance, but I think this scene nailed the Oscar nominations for McAdams and Ruffalo, in particular.

In smaller roles are John Slattery as a Globe managing editor, Liev Schreiber, an actor who can go wildly over-the-top forced to underplay to great effect here, as the new newspaper editor, Billy Crudup and Stanley Tucci as lawyers on opposite sides of the case, and Len Cariou as Cardinal Law, so unnerving and gentle in equal measure. Again, it’s hard to pick out a standout, as everyone here is turning in some great work. Accents are hard for some actors, but none of the ones heard here dip into cartoon-ish Bah-ston of dropped r’s and harsh consonants. It feels natural, and the flavor of the town is palpable.

If Spotlight has any problem, it’s in the nondescript direction. One could argue that Tom McCarthy was getting out of the way of the case, and refusing to sensationalize or somehow treat this material as salacious. This is true, Spotlight is very respectful and measured in its treatment of the facts, but one glance over McCarthy’s minuscule filmography and one can gleam no personal style. He’s a workman director, and he does fine work here, but his nomination seems more like overriding love for the movie than anything else. Oh well, there have been worse nominees (and winners) in Oscar’s past. If the movie’s overall flavor and tone is like a redux of All the President’s Men at times, hey, that’s not a bad movie to be compared to.