The director of Spotlight, Tom McCarthy, has made just five films, but he鈥檚 already one of the fine directors in this country. He鈥檚 precise and deliberate in his moves; he finds the drama in even minor events and situations, and just as he does in The Station Agent and The Visitor, McCarthy goes for things that matter.
In Spotlight, a man says to a reporter that if it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to abuse a child 鈥� and that鈥檚 partly what the film is about.
Spotlight takes its title from the name of The Boston Globe鈥檚 investigative team 鈥� an editor and three reporters crammed into a tiny office in a windowless cinder block room in a deep basement.
A new editor comes to the Globe, which makes the staff uptight. Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) is an outsider; he鈥檚 moved up from Florida; he鈥檚 Jewish in a town dominated by the Catholic Church and a newspaper whose staff is heavily Boston-grown and Catholic. Baron senses that something is fishy in the church hierarchy on the subject of priestly abuse of children, and he wants Spotlight editor Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) to dig into the story.
Spotlight makes the city itself crucial. There鈥檚 the Globe office downtown. From there, the three reporters fan out to South Boston, Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods. Most of the abused children came from struggling families and broken homes 鈥� the rogue priests were good at insinuating themselves as rays of hope and care into distressed lives. Spotlight shows the homes of working class Boston, where those abused, now grown up, live with the damage that was done to them. The film visits the plush offices of the cardinal who protected the abusers, the lawyers who engineered the cover-up settlements, and the wealthy charities that make the whole enterprise look benevolent.
As Spotlight shows things, the Catholic Church reaches deep into the life of the city. An assistant district attorney says 鈥淥f course, Father,鈥� as if he were at mass. The new editor pays the expected courtesy call on the cardinal 鈥� and the cardinal gives him a gift, which he calls a guide to the city. It鈥檚 a Catechism. Even the tough reporters hesitate at the thought of investigating the church that raised them, and avoid telling their grandmothers, fathers and aunts what they鈥檙e doing. The presence of the church flows into conversation at Red Sox games. When the reporters talk to the victims in their neighborhoods, there鈥檚 usually a church somewhere in the image. It鈥檚 inescapable, and it grows clear that just about everyone is in some way complicit.
Years earlier, The Boston Globe itself buried the story 鈥� good newspaper people couldn鈥檛 see its importance through their own indoctrination. So, among other things, Spotlight is about the power of group-think; Boston is a city in the grip of a terrible acquiescence.
One lawyer working alone is taking abuse cases. Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), an Armenian, tells the lead reporter Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), who鈥檚 Portuguese, only outsiders like them can do this investigation. They don鈥檛 look like anyone else in the movie; they鈥檙e dark and abrupt, twitchy and excitable.
The investigation moves deliberately, so you feel the weight of every page of the story as it鈥檚 turned over. It鈥檚 not just a question of amassing the evidence; it鈥檚 also a matter of overcoming resistance to turning those pages, sometimes literally 鈥� legal files, public records turn up missing. It seems that nearly everyone knows what is happening, hates what鈥檚 happening, but can鈥檛 bring themselves to speak out loud.
Director Tom McCarthy and Japanese cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi make remarkable close-ups of faces of people fighting inwardly with themselves, wanting to talk but unable to do it, and sometimes not yet conscious of the turmoil inside them. The faces give the lie to the false brightness of the city outside.
