Spotlight | Little White Lies

Spot­light

25 Jan 2016 / Released: 29 Jan 2016

Three colleagues working together at a desk in an office, surrounded by papers and office equipment.
Three colleagues working together at a desk in an office, surrounded by papers and office equipment.
4

Anticipation.

The subject matter may be grim, but the Oscar buzz gives it sparkle.

5

Enjoyment.

Remarkable control, sensational storytelling.

5

In Retrospect.

An extraordinary paean to journalistic endeavour.

Tom McCarthy deliv­ers an old-school jour­nal­is­tic thriller with the help of a sen­sa­tion­al all-star cast.

Do you real­ly wan­na hear this shit?” a sex­u­al abuse sur­vivor asks Mark Ruffalo’s reporter Mike Rezen­des in writer/​director Tom McCarthy’s dis­ci­plined pro­ce­dur­al dra­ma Spot­light. The unspool­ing of hard-to-hear truths is at the heart of this sto­ry about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning inves­tiga­tive team (called Spot­light’) who exposed child molesta­tion by Catholic priests in the Boston Arch­dio­cese, ulti­mate­ly trig­ger­ing a world­wide scandal.

As events unfold, the film makes a com­pelling case for old-school jour­nal­ism and its meth­ods. We are intro­duced to the paper’s team in July 2001, who are all lapsed Catholics and are asked by incom­ing edi­tor Mar­ty Baron (Liev Schreiber) to look into claims that a Boston priest had abused over 80 children.

Although this is a 21st cen­tu­ry sto­ry, the film is very much a paper trail of clip­pings, direc­to­ries, let­ters and court-files. The team take notes and build trust as they scru­ti­nise, probe and – most impor­tant­ly – lis­ten to the vic­tims. The eye for detail extends to the cast’s nuanced, excep­tion­al per­for­mances: Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeif­fer chan­nels pure sen­si­tiv­i­ty as she allows those who share their expe­ri­ences to pour their pain into her; Schreiber is mov­ing­ly tac­i­turn; Ruf­fa­lo is endear­ing­ly earnest and awk­ward­ly insis­tent; while John Slat­tery as senior col­league Ben Bradlee Jr and Stan­ley Tuc­ci as the victim’s eccen­tric lawyer Mitchell Garabe­di­an com­plete a remark­able ensemble.

Refus­ing to be dis­tract­ed by domes­tic sub­plots, Spot­light still man­ages to explore the per­son­al con­se­quences of putting a cat amongst the pigeons. Pfeif­fer is wor­ried about her devout grandmother’s reac­tion, Bri­an d’Arcy James’s Matt Car­roll finds a group of pae­dophile priests hid­den alarm­ing­ly close to his house, and the well-con­nect­ed Wal­ter Rob­by’ Robin­son (Michael Keaton, the film’s cen­tral pres­ence) is forced to con­front friends who have been pro­fes­sion­al­ly com­plic­it in wrongdoing.

Their new edi­tor Baron is a Jew­ish out­sider in a Catholic city whose bear­ish pres­ence can’t hide his anx­i­ety. Spot­light resists histri­on­ics, reject­ing the thriller tropes that would ren­der events more con­ven­tion­al­ly cin­e­mat­ic. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Masanobu Takayanagi’s mut­ed palette respect­ful­ly reflects the seri­ous­ness of the sto­ry, the chilly, hum­drum envi­rons and the frosty recep­tion that greets the paper’s inves­ti­ga­tion; while Howard Shore’s unob­tru­sive score cre­ates a sense of a sto­ry gath­er­ing momen­tum and keeps things nail-bit­ing when they’re up against the clock. But there is no soar­ing cli­max or sweep­ing melod­ic gut-punches.

Such restraint demon­strates how the team’s right­eous anger is kept in check by their painstak­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer hone in on the graft, skill and val­ue of draw­ing togeth­er a com­plex sto­ry from pieces that have been scat­tered and con­cealed. If it’s a pic­ture of jour­nal­ism at its most dogged and hon­ourable then Spot­light doesn’t dis­re­gard the paper’s own faults as it high­lights a community’s fail­ings, both insti­tu­tion­al and domes­tic. While there are uni­ver­sal truths here, it also mas­ter­ful­ly fil­ters in the spe­cif­ic con­text – this big city’s small town mind­set, the way it con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly clos­es ranks around the church. As Garabe­di­an sad­ly notes: If it takes a vil­lage to raise a child, it takes a vil­lage to abuse one.”

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