[yasr_overall_rating]
Journalism is a tough job, but someone has to tell the stories of the voiceless. In Boston, there was a growing group of voiceless people starting to talk. When the Boston Globe finally decided to listen, the reporting helped tear down a system that allowed priests to abuse young children and their stories swept under a rug.
The story behind that reporting is the subject of filmmaker Tom McCarthy’s new film, Spotlight. It reinvigorates the journalism movie and turns out to be the rightful successor to All The President’s Men.
Spotlight is named after the Globe’s Spotlight team of investigative reporters, led by Walter ‘Robby’ Robertson (Michael Keaton). The rest of the team was made up of Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sascha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James). While it might be heroic to portray Robby as the man who came up with the idea to follow up on the John Geoghan sex abuse case, but it was Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who just became the Globe editor at the time after working at the Miami Herald.
The team keeps digging and eventually learns how the Catholic Church would move priests from one parish to the next after they were accused of sexually abusing young children. They also discover that some attorneys have created a “cottage industry” out of the accusations, by getting clients to accept small settlements that involve them signing confidentiality agreements. Their ultimate goal is to show that Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) had known about the abuse, but ignored it.
Since anyone in Boston and around the world knows how this case turned out, McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer focus on the fascinating process of reporting. Yes, this might seem talky and even monotonous to impatient viewers, but it is endlessly fascinating to see where each new piece of evidence takes the team. McCarthy successfully gets the audience’s attention and holds it, in the same way that Alan J. Pakula did with All The President’s Men.
Successful journalism movies turn the story into a suspense thriller and Spotlight works because McCarthy figured that out. There is suspense because the audience doesn’t know the long, drawn out process of getting these stories written. It’s also there as the characters on the screen don’t know how their questions will be answered.
McCarthy also collected some incredible talent for one of the best on-screen ensembles in years. Each actor gets their own moment in the spotlight (sorry) and even the smallest roles are filled with talented supporting players. Michael Keaton gives another great performance after Birdman, proving again that his talent desperately needed to be rediscovered. Mark Ruffalo gives an impassioned performance, as if his life is on the line with every decision his character makes. John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Paul Guilfoyle, Jamey Sheridan and Billy Crudup all get memorable moments throughout the film.
But possibly some of the most memorable performances in the film come from the lesser-known actors who play the victims of priests. Since none of them are familiar-faces, that adds a bit of realism to the film. Their roles remind us why the team is doing this. It’s not for the Pulitzer Prize they eventually won, but it’s for all the people hurt.
Spotlight isn’t all rosy and doesn’t paint the Globe as some savior from the beginning. The film touches on the guilt Robby feels for not pushing on the story sooner. Why did it take an outsider from Miami to push them? It is a question that hovers over the film, looking over Robby’s shoulder at every turn.
Spotlight’s script might struggle to find ways to squeeze in explanations for each reporter's interest in telling the story, but that’s not what interested McCarthy. The facts of the scandal were so shocking that anyone would be interested in getting to the bottom of it, no matter what their background was. With that laser focus, Spotlight is a lean thriller that proves that how you put together a report is just as important as the final product.
Spotlight hits theaters on Nov. 6. It was reviewed at the Savannah Film Festival, presented by the Savannah College of Art & Design.