"Spotlight" (2015)

In the midst of a pandemic that’s ravaging the United States, there's a harrowing question that we as a nation are facing right now: are there really any adults in the room?  Whatever your thoughts are on the current presidential administration, and whichever state government that’s presiding over you right now, it’s hard to honestly say that on any level we’ve handled things appropriately and effectively. Election year politicking, legal red tape, infrastructural decay, and countless other road blocks that have led to a weak response to this virus have us questioning just how much those who are supposed to be protecting and serving us in the public domain are truly up to the task. While the idea that they’re not is a scary one, it’s not necessarily just unique to the COVID-19 crisis; 12 years ago, the same question was being asked in regards to the real estate market crash. Seven years prior to that it was 9/11, and on down the line.  It’s an unnerving thought, but an almost equally unnerving one is that there are in fact many adults in many different rooms. Dark rooms, shrouded in shadow and mystery, and protected by a web of misinformation and intimidation, that was constructed by some of the most powerful people in the world.  Neither reality is easy to stomach, but deep down we know that there are elements of both of these proverbial ideas present at all levels of society, even today. And the one connective thread between both sides of these hypothetical aisles? The unfortunate fact that one or the other (or both) actually being the case makes us uncomfortable, so we don’t talk about them, and we don’t think too deeply about them if we can help it. Why? For fears of how we’ll be perceived, or (maybe worse yet) what exactly it is we’ll find if we dig deep enough. The Spotlight team on the 2001 Boston Globe weren’t afraid of that. And the 2015 best picture and best original screenplay winner is a tremendous testament to all of their great work.

Directed by: Tom McCarthy Jake’s rating: 9.0/10 Streaming on: Netflix, Rent on Amazon

Irish-Catholicism is as baked into Boston culture as drawn out vowels, the Paul Revere statue, and an unconditional love of David Ortiz. This is something that runs deep throughout McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer’s script. Our principal characters are comprised of a heavy hitting cast who could all pass for John (or Jane) Q from Southie, each bringing interesting elements to the ensemble. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton particularly standing out in the group portraying Mike Rezendez and Walter “Robby” Robinson respectively. They and their colleagues are balanced out by their shrewd and professional editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) who’s role in the film isn’t immediately made clear - more on him later. Keaton’s uncanny ability to disappear into a role helps him here, as I right away bought him to be a man between faith and professional duty, who both recognizes the importance of the job he’s doing, but all the same likes to forget about the headiness of it for a few hours while he’s out on the golf course with his friends. Conversely, Ruffalo’s Rezendez is dogged and ambitious, but only an actor of his caliber is able to play it the way he does, as someone who’s exceptionally invested in the story that he and the Globe are trying to break, but doesn’t lose sight of the sensitivity of the subject matter. The lazy play by McCarthy and Singer would’ve been to tack Rezendez with the careerist label, and make him a cartoon character who pursues the facts at all cost, but instead the approach is one that makes you believe he really, truly cares about this story - in that way, you'll feel reassured that they do as well.

That’s not easy to do with a story like this, and it’s especially not easy to do it in the way that they did. In fact, a story surrounding Catholic priests and their alleged sexual abuse of young children that reaches so far and wide that it can be traced all the way back to Vatican City is quite hard to bring to screen in the correct way; interestingly enough, McCarthy and Singer find a way to do so by not being especially judgmental, at least of any of the individuals involved.

In that way, they’re helped by the fact that this is of course an entirely true story which they mostly stick to verbatim, save for a few minor differences inserted for dramatic effect. Does it seem far fetched that a priest would readily admit to molesting a young boy, all the while not recognizing that what he did was the slightest bit wrong?  Maybe, but that’s what actually happened, and is a scene within this movie that’s based on an actual interaction between Father Ronald Paquin and some of the Spotlight team members. Paquin’s indifference to his horrific actions are of course appalling, but from a bird’s eye view, that’s what this investigation  (and in turn this movie) was about; not the individual actions of the priests, or even those who worked to cover them up, but rather the deep rooted culture that caused them to act and react in this perverse way.

Deep rooted corruption, suppression of information, and an all-too well founded reliance on the willful ignorance of society allowed the Catholic Church to cover up their crimes going back decades before the movie begins in proper. And as we see in moments of weakness in several of the characters including the Spotlight team’s leader Robinson, they succeed mainly because of that last part - there are some things about the world that we’re better off not knowing, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.  Near the end of the film, as Robinson’s Catholic upbringing and the revelations of the story truly begin to come to a head, he relates to another character with a similar background with the idea that deep down, they all knew something was going on. The easy thing to do would be to not pull on that thread or go down that road, as it may be one that you’ll never truly return from. This dilemma that sits at the center of the movie is perfectly encapsulated by Liev Schreiber’s Marty Baron, the non-emotional sounding board for the Spotlight team: “Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark. Suddenly a light gets turned on and there’s a fair share of blame to go around. All of you have done some very good reporting here. Reporting, that I believe is gonna have an immediate, and considerable impact on our readers. For me, this kind of story is why we do this.” Schreiber’s understated performance is hard to get a read on at times which is a deliberate choice, because it’s in that moment that the stakes of the film are plainly stated, and McCarthy and Singer make their message abundantly clear through their impartial cipher of a character: no one said that quality journalism was going to be easy. Just like success at anything else in life, the road is going to be bumpy and you may not like what you find at the end of it - but most importantly, regardless of the outcome and the reaction, you’ll know deep down that you did the right thing. There are many difficult truths about the world that we live in, and some of them are extremely uncomfortable to think about. This is something you can definitely relate to if you’re Irish-Catholic in particular; “Whatever you say, say nothing,” as Irish poet Seamus Heaney once said.  It’s an attitude that’s as toxic as it is relatable, but thanks to the actions of the Spotlight team, we’ve learned that it can in fact be challenged. If for nothing else than that, this movie is an absolute must watch.