88. Spotlight (2015)

Plot Intro

Boston, 2001. A team of investigative journalists at the Boston Globe (Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James) come across some documents suggesting that a Catholic priest may be guilty of sexually abusing minors. As they look deeper, they discover far more than they bargained for…

Doug says...

I watched Spotlight a couple of years ago but wasn’t impressed. I think I was half-watching it and doing other things and got the gist of it - paedophile priests, big cover-up by Catholic Church - and found it an unfinished, slightly dull film. 

This time I watched it and was struck dumb. This is an extraordinary, subtle, and powerfully unsentimental examination of how journalism at its best has to power to rock and unseat huge corporations shrouded in mystery of their own making. There is no bigger Goliath than the Catholic Church which has somehow managed to survive relentless scandals globally. But where the film Philomena left me storming with rage, this one is somehow quieter and more gripping. 

There is no luck. It is all hard graft and work. We see the team of reporters (a uniformly brilliant ensemble performance) poring over books, analysing data, developing leads and basically working bloody hard to get results. In one scene, a reporter desperately tries to get files with explosive knowledge from the courthouse - files that are technically open access yet the Church has managed to make ‘disappear’. It’s a brilliantly tense series of scenes that leaves you gobsmacked at the sheer awfulness of the Church and gunning for this lone reporter battling the red tape to tell the story. 

We also hear from the victims. I think overall I’m most impressed by how the film deals with this. We hear the stories from the victims, and see how they have been affected by the abuse, and yet it is not sensationalised or sentimentalised. In fact, the emotion comes in a later scene when one reporter is desperate to publish what they have and the editor forces them to hold off, and wait till they can report the bigger scene. It’s a furious argument in which you fully understand both sides - and in a way acts as a sort of catharsis for the emotions from the victims’ testimonials. These reporters care most about the story and the victims - there is no petty squabble at play here. 

Where the victims are given honest space, so too are the shadows of the Church itself. In one scene, a high up official politely and terrifyingly makes ominous threats against one of the reporters, in another a priest (clearly in the grip of dementia) openly admits to one of the reporters that he abused the children. In yet another the principal of a school asks the reporters to keep hush about a priest who abused children on the hockey team which he coached. These aren’t shown as monsters - they’re shown as people who think and act a certain way, who have managed to somehow shuffle the awfulness of what they’re covering up out of their mind. The priest with dementia says himself ‘well, I was raped’. There is acknowledgement made that most (if not all) of these abusers would have suffered some psychosexual abuse themselves. 

After the film finished I found myself in tears and struggling to speak for quite some time. Paul assumed that it was the horror of the abusers and the church’s disgusting actions - and he wasn’t completely wrong. But I was actually most moved by the final scene in which the Spotlight team find themselves inundated with callers - ‘survivors’ - reporting their own abuse. In a world where the Church loomed large, how astonishing and freeing it must have been for these survivors to at last be able to bring light to their own history of abuse, and let their history with all its twisted and gnarly after-effects finally be shown - and recognised. 

The Catholic Church openly welcomed this film, showing screenings, and thanking the producers for essentially ‘helping them be better’. As much salt as one might take this with, it’s still an example of Goliath - if not dead - being made to acknowledge David is right, and perhaps strive to be better.  

Highlight 

The moments throughout the film that show the tenacity, skill and professionalism of the journalists are gripping and should be held as a beacon to all those in that industry. 

Lowlight

None. Everything was dealt with sensitively, intelligently and allowing discussion - whether of abuser or abused, Church or Media. 

Mark 

10/10

Paul says...

Spotlight was, like Argo and Birdman, another surprise win. It defeated films with a much higher profile, such as The Big Short, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, Bridge of Spies, The Martian, The Revenant and Room. It was the first Best Picture winner since 1952 to only win one other Oscar (for screenplay) and lost out on its other five nominations. As mentioned in my Birdman review, it is interesting that, in the age of Netflix, multi-award winning epics are not the big winners anymore because most of these stories can now be binged in 10-episode mini series. So we have another understated, rather unassuming film, winning the most coveted award in cinema.

As Doug says, it’s an absolute hard-hitter due to its stomach-churning and heart-breaking content, which is remarkable bearing in mind that you never see any of these crimes being committed. There is one, brief flashback that opens the film but so little is seen in it, it’s almost redundant. The emphasis here is on our heroic journalists’ techniques and integrity. The sense of realism is very strong. Every line of dialogue feels like something a real person would say. The revelations that come out of their investigation are not discovered through big, melodramatic reveals or tearful courtroom confessions. Instead, horrible crimes are brought to light by trawling through archival tomes, finding long-hidden files (or, in some cases, not finding them), and by asking the gutsy, confrontational questions at the right time. I was certainly left with great admiration for the work of investigative journalists (as well as a hatred for the Catholic Church, oddly enough).

One of the best plot choices that these film makers chose to do was not to show much of the Catholic church at all. It’s spoken of as some kind of omni-present, unseen entity. It’s not just a collection of buildings and meetings, it’s intricately woven into our society and our morals. It’s also pertinent that, in most outdoor scenes, there is a church somewhere in the background, either slightly hidden, or looming over our characters like a vulture. A haunting directorial choice. 

The exact acts of the culpable priests are only spoken of, but the actors of the victims convey their fragility and their desperation for retribution. We also get a firm understanding of how and why these priests got away with it. Their victims were from broken, desperate households, households so in awe of the church that they would turn a blind eye, or, in one case, a young boy struggling with his homosexuality. This last character is played with tremendous power by an actor called Michael Cyril Creighton who deserves a big shout-out for such a small role.

A bit of a pre-warning: this is a very wordy film. Like I said, journalism is portrayed through small acts of investigation, and the crimes are not portrayed, only spoken about. Names of priests, lawyers, politicians, and journalists are bandied about in the fast-paced script and I occasionally found it hard to keep track. Don’t go in expecting chase scenes, melodrama or explosions. This is verging on documentary and may not be for everyone.

Surprisingly, the 2010s have been a tremendous decade for Best Picture Oscars, with The King’s Speech, The Artist, Argo and Birdman all in quick succession. And Spotlight is another gem to add to the list. It brilliantly conveys journalistic excitement. We share the horror these people feel when they make their discoveries. We share their frustration with bureaucratic barriers, or when 9/11 happens and suddenly the whole investigation has to be put on hold for a more imperative story. And we understand their development from trying to find a story that sells a paper, through to exposing a story that brings justice to literally thousands in Boston alone. This is writing at its best, and its angriest. 

Highlight

Michael Cyril Creighton’s scene in which he provides the story of his childhood abuse to Rachel McAdams is a hard watch. Creighton brilliantly captures this man’s emotional vulnerability and his desire to be strong. It’s all the more heart-breaking when he comes to the end of his story and then looks off-camera and says “Oh look, there’s a church”, showing how he is constantly haunted by his trauma. 

Lowlight

There were times when I wasn’t really sure what was happening, exactly. This is a very minor quibble because usually things came together. But the fast-paced complexity of the film could sometimes lead to me feeling a bit disengaged. 

Mark

9/10