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Ruffalo, McAdams, Keaton and James head up the investigation into the church in Spotlight |
The story was bought to wider attention by the dedicated
work of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team – the US’s finest
investigative journalist team, a small team of reporters who work for months at
one story. Boston is a firmly Catholic city, where the Church still holds a
huge influence over the lives of its population. For years, faint suspicions of
misconduct from any of the nearly 1,500 priests in the city was hushed up. It
takes the arrival of an outsider at the Boston Globe – the paper’s unassuming
new Jewish, Floridian editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) – to push the
Spotlight team to delve deeper into this story. He finds plenty of support from
the team – respected editor “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), the passionate
Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), dedicated and empathetic Sacha Pfeiffer
(Rachel McAdams) and increasingly disgusted Matt Caroll (Brian d’Arcy James).
Using tried-and-trusted journalistic methods, passionate investigation,
archival work and winning the confidence of survivors, the team piece together
a systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church that extends all the way to the
Vatican.
Spotlight scooped the Oscar for Best Picture (along
with an Oscar for its brilliantly researched screenplay). It feels like a late
Oscar partly awarded in memory of All the President’s Men, the film that
Spotlight bears the most relation to. But, even more so than Pakula’s
film, this is a low-key, reserved but strikingly effective and engrossing film
that takes an almost documentary approach to the patient work required to
uncover a story (no Deep Throat here) and the grinding shoe leather needed to
get there. Fittingly, given the tragic story the team were reporting on, Spotlight
is almost totally devoid of histrionics (there is at best one scene where a
member of the team gets angry – only to be met with a quiet “are you done?”),
instead being a tribute to the professionalism and integrity of journalists powered,
but never overwhelmed by, their anger.
McCarthy’s film is refreshingly free of flourish or
over-emphasis. It’s brave enough to let the story speak for itself, and trusts
the viewer to understand both the emotional weight of abuse and the feelings of
those involved without resorting to dramatic speeches or tearful dialogue. The
details dominate – searching through archives for old newspaper clippings,
waiting for access to court papers, days spent reading over a decade of parish
records. Nothing is earned cheaply: every revelation the result of patient
leg-work and following where the story leads without agenda or bias.
Agenda is something these journalists are deeply aware of.
All of the team were raised in the faith to one degree or another, with strong
roots in a community. The team’s leader, Robby, is an esteemed alumnus of a
Catholic school one of the guilty priests worked at when he was a child – a
revelation that quietly leads him to question both his implicit turning of a
blind eye, but also how only a single man’s choices prevented him from becoming
a victim. There is discomfort throughout the Boston Globe at the story –
assistant Editor Ben Bradlee Jnr (a fine performance from John Slattery), while
supportive of the team, is prickly at revelations that the Globe had
previously not followed up reports of abuse and is deeply unhappy at the
thought of accusing the Church itself.
The power of the Church in communities like this is subtly, but brilliantly, depicted. The film opens in the 70s with a paedophile priest having his actions being quietly hushed up by the police after the intervention of an ADA. Virtually every important person in the city is a Catholic and, like Robby, has been bought up and schooled in the Church. In exterior shots, McCarthy’s camera constantly frames churches on the edges of shot, their spires visible over residential blocks. The scale of the power of this institution – its reach and influence – is constantly demonstrated. It’s a big challenge for the team to take on – and one which they are not even sure their readers are ready to read about.
But McCarthy’s film isn’t crude. It’s made clear that these
priests are a minority – 6% – and the anger is not with faith itself, but with
the flawed and wrong decisions taken by men (the psychologist the team consults,
an ex-priest, makes clear his faith is not shaken by his discoveries, only his
trust in the institution). Equal care is given to the victims themselves. Their
stories are reported by two characters in the film, each time with a careful
lack of over-emphasis and a quiet, yet emotional, honesty. No attempt is made
to sensationalise any of this.
And the film also makes clear that everyone is in some way
complicit in this. The Globe has failed to report it. The police and
government have covered it up. People might whisper about it – or say a
particular priest is “dodgy” – but no one has made an effort to rock the boat
and find out about it. Instead, victims are paid off, priests are moved to new
parishes and everyone tries to carry on as normal. It’s a grimy and quiet
conspiracy – miles away from the Grisham-esque danger the film’s trailer
suggested – rather a collective failure of moral responsibility.
The film’s low-key approach, professionalism and absorption
in how people do their jobs is deeply engrossing. Few things, after all, are as
involving as watching highly professional people execute their jobs flawlessly.
The performances are superb. Michael Keaton gives possibly the finest
performance of his career – surely connected to it being his most restrained –
as the team’s leader, whose sense of personal guilt and regret quietly build
along with determination. Ruffalo (Oscar-nominated) is fantastic as his passionate,
committed colleague (he gets the one shouting scene). McAdams delivers quiet
empathy and powerful intelligence. Schreiber confounds expectations as the
numbers man who emerges as a dedicated searcher for the truth.
The truth is exposed – but it’s just a tip of the iceberg.
The story might be out there, but as the film shows in its coda, the struggle goes
on. Crusading maverick lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci, very good)
can’t celebrate the story’s publication – he’s got two child victims he needs
to talk to. Cardinal Law (a fine performance of assured, misguided, certainty
from Len Cariou) is promoted to the Vatican. Similar scandals emerge across the
world. But the problem doesn’t go away. Just as the story needs time and work,
the same qualities are needed to reform the Church.
Spotlight is quiet, engrossing and finely moving and
triumphant film-making. It focuses brilliantly on professionalism and
dedication producing results and shows that hyperbole and embellishment are not
needed for outstanding drama. Told with documentary realism, acted with
reserved grace and skill, McCarthy’s film is a call-back to 1970s film-making
in the best possible way. A deserved winner and a small triumph.
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