When I think back on the best movies so far this year, they tend to be films that have upended my expectations by defying genres or showing me something I’ve never seen before. A film that uses animation to probe the psyche of an 11 year-old girl (“Inside Out”). A dystopian action spectacle where the hero is a female warrior (“Mad Max: Fury Road”). A comedic examination of what happens when regular people come to the end of their emotional rope, told in six short stories (“Wild Tales”). These are films that break the mold, and each is a creative breakthrough in storytelling.
“Spotlight” does not break the mold. “Spotlight” takes an even more radical approach. It takes a very very good story and tells it very very well. What a concept!
The film’s title refers to the Spotlight team of four investigative newspaper reporters at the Boston Globe, who in 2001 exposed just how widespread the child molestation scandal stretched within the Boston Archdiocese. It would be hard to underestimate the impact that the Spotlight’s team’s exposé had on the people of Boston. I lived in Massachusetts for much of the ’70s, and at that time the Catholic Church was seen as another arm of government. You may love the Red Sox, but you were bound by the Church, and whatever the Cardinal says, goes.
The Globe investigation actually began in 2000 with the arrival of a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who is unmarried, Jewish and hates baseball. Obviously, this guy is going to have a hard time in the much-married, Roman Catholic world of Red Sox Nation. But sometimes it takes an outsider’s eye to see the story that’s right in front of them — Bostonians for years knew that some priests “diddled around,” but their actions were dismissed as the work of just “a few bad apples.” Baron wants to know just how many “bad apples” there were out there and assigns the Spotlight team to get to the truth.
To take on the Roman Catholic Church in Boston is a potentially dangerous move, and each member of the Spotlight team, all lapsed Catholics, has a reason to be concerned.
The team’s leader, Walter “Robby” Robertson (Michael Keaton), moves easily, given his position, within the upper echelons of the Boston Catholic elite, schmoozing with Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou, channeling the glad-handing personality of New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan) and all of the city’s top lawyers whose interest it is to protect the Archdiocese. It’s a very comfy world that Robby socializes in, and will this story jeopardize his relationships?
Reporter Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) is the pitbull of the group, relentlessly following every lead until he gets his story. Shaken in his personal life, Rezendes is considering returning to the Church, but will this story shake his faith?
Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), who is the “good cop” of the team, getting her information with a soft touch but determined to nail her story, has her closest relationship with her church-going nana (I can relate) and worried that what she finds in the course of doing her job may emotionally devastate her family.
Matt Carroll (Broadway star Brian d’Arcy James of “Something Rotten!”) is the research guy of the team, but when his findings uncover the fact that there is a safe house for sex offenders (including priests) just around the corner from his house, he becomes hugely concerned for the welfare of his family.
So there are big emotional stakes here. But the focus is relentlessly on the investigation, as the reporters meet dead end after dead end, and finally begin to chip away to reach the truth. “Spotlight” is a process film, showing us what it means to pound the pavement to get a story with a thoroughness that I’ve haven’t seen since “All the President’s Men.”
The script by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy is superb. I had a brief stint working at a newspaper years ago, and believe me, they capture the way newspaper people really talk. For example, when a new editor comes in, newspaper folk don’t ask “Is he nice?” or “What’s she like?” — they want to know whether there are going to be layoffs. And that directness is what “Spotlight” captures perfectly.
An actor himself, McCarthy gets remarkable performances from his ensemble (and this truly is an ensemble — SAG Awards, take note). Keaton’s restraint and Ruffalo’s aggressiveness are both brilliantly achieved, and I think both men are locks for a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. McAdams and Schreiber are both nomination-worthy, as well as Stanley Tucci, who, in the film’s most intriguing subplot plays Mitchell Garabedian, an Armenian-American attorney who initially resists Ruffalo’s dogged questioning but manages to provide in the end the key to unlocking the case. Seeing great actors like Tucci and Ruffalo go toe-to-toe is an acting class in itself.
“Spotlight” is not a film about child molestation. It’s a film about the newspaper business, an institution that may be on its way out. But if it is, “Spotlight” celebrates it with style, understanding and love.
