Classic American films: Spotlight – important and good journalism drama, and Oscar-winning too
- The film is inspired by The Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation into systemic child abuse covered up by the Catholic Church, which won a Pulitzer Prize
- Frank and unflashy, it works like good journalism, letting the awful facts speak for themselves
In this regular feature series on some of the most talked-about films, we examine the legacy of classics and re-evaluate modern blockbusters. We continue this week with the 2015 film Spotlight .
As the bewildering success of Green Book showed, it’s all too rare for a Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards to be both important and good. But Tom McCarthy’s 2015 journalism drama, based on an Oscar-winning script by Josh Singer and McCarthy, more than qualifies.
Inspired by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, whose 2001 investigation into systemic child abuse covered up by the Catholic Church won a Pulitzer Prize, Spotlight is a frank, unflashy film, and all the better for it.
Lead by Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), the team leave no stone unturned as they interview priests, city grandees and abuse survivors, only to find themselves blocked at every juncture. So how do they tell the truth about the church in a town run by the church?
One of the many things the film gets right is its portrayal of how unglamorous journalism really is. In strip-lit offices the colour of a bad bleach job, the team – pale, puffy-eyed, getting by on fast food and bad coffee – make futile phone calls and comb through endless clippings. The filing room, someone notes, has a dead rat in the corner.
Among an exceptional cast, Keaton does a good job of keeping Robby ordinary – just a clever, decent guy with good connections. He even wears one of those mobile phone holsters beloved of badly dressed middle-aged men.
Liv Schrieber, meanwhile, is suitably severe and remote as new editor Marty Barron. And Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James make convincingly committed reporters, the camera interrupting their not-particularly-interesting private lives just as the job does.
Special mention should go to Stanley Tucci as lawyer Mitch Garabedian, who a lesser film would frame as a maverick hero. Here, with his wild hair, overflowing office desk and dyspeptic manner, he is a crank committed to uncovering the truth, no more, no less.
Without lingering too much on the darker details, the film gives sensitive voice to its grown-up survivors, their pain and shame still palpable after all these years. “How do you say no to god, right?” asks one. Another has track marks up his arm. Later we see him pushing his son on the swings. “He’s one of the lucky ones,” says Garabedian. “He’s still alive.”
Except for a slightly misjudged, give-me-an-Oscar speech by Ruffalo, there’s no melodrama, no hysterics, not one moment of falseness. Spotlight is a film that makes you weep, but never tries to make you. Instead, it works like good journalism, adding detail upon detail to build a case where the awful facts speak for themselves.
