Best Pictures #13: 2015 (88th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee, Spotlight (2015)

by A.J.

2015 (88^th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Spotlight (2015)

For Spotlight, the story of a real team of Boston Globe reporters who uncovered a wide-reaching child abuse scandal, the film’s greatest virtue seems to be its verisimilitude. Every review I have read by critics that either work for newspapers or have studied journalism, extolls the film’s accurate portrayal of journalists and their profession. Comparisons to Oscar-nominated All the President’s Men are ubiquitous and inevitable; both are dramatizations of true stories about journalists uncovering crimes and cover-ups involving powerful institutions. Like All the President’s Men, and two other 2015 Best Picture nominees—The Big Short and Bridge of Spies, Spotlight depicts a true story to which we already know the outcome. However, the film is so well-executed that we are right with the characters in each moment, feeling, as they do, what must happen, but unsure whether they will succeed.

Early in Spotlight, the Globe’s new editor-in-chief, Marty Baron (played with a laconic manner and inscrutable expression by Liev Schrieber) is summoned for a meet-and-greet with Cardinal Law, head of the Boston Archdiocese. Law tells him, “The city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” The Cardinal’s notion of working together implies that the Globe will protect the interests of the Church; a notion which puts Baron on guard. After reading a column about a sexually abusive Boston priest, Baron urges Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) to have his team of investigative reporters, known as Spotlight, make their next project about sexual abuse within the Church and the cover-up by the Archdiocese. Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James are the three other members of the Spotlight team. The more they dig into the known cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, they quickly discover that they are not dealing with one or two isolated cases of abuse, but something far bigger and more disturbing. The frequency of the abuse, and lack of consequences for the abusers, points to an insidious cover-up, reaching all the way to Cardinal Law himself. However, the team needs hard proof to support their story and the search for that proof is where the plot of Spotlight builds its momentum.

Spotlight has an impressive cast, but the real stars of the movie are the devastating facts and the testimonials of the survivors. We follow the reporters down their investigative trail, searching through reams of papers, having conversations with lawyers and Church representatives, and tracking down survivors willing to share their stories. Court appeals to open sealed documents and searches for records in basement file cabinets are executed as engaging and suspenseful action. As reporter Sacha Pfeiffer, McAdams conducts several interviews with survivors of abuse. The scenes build slowly – the reporter knows she can’t push for answers; they have to tell their stories at their own speed. McAdams, as the stand-in for the audience, must patiently listen and these are among the most powerful and effective scenes in the film.

Every character, major and minor, feels like a real person; which is good because this story really happened to real people. Mark Ruffalo gets top billing and has received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for a performance which some feel is the best of the ensemble. With a pronounced accent and mannerisms, it is certainly the most noticeable. Even in scenes with Stanley Tucci (an actor who is always ready to steal a scene, or the entire movie) as an eccentric, sharp-tongued lawyer with crazy hair who is bringing a suit against the Church, Ruffalo somehow manages to be the showier performer. Ruffalo’s performance is not bad, but it does stick out among an ensemble of naturalistic performances. Keaton and the others seem to disappear into their roles instead of wearing them.

Tom McCarthy’s Oscar-nominated direction gives Spotlight a straightforward, but not dull, visual style. The camera and screenplay keep their focus on the characters and the investigation. This movie could have easily slipped into a series of fist-pounding speeches of righteous indignation (one scene with Ruffalo’s character that feels more obligatory than earned comes the closest) and made the Globe reporters into crusaders, but McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer, along with the excellent ensemble, keep the tone of the movie subdued and grounded in reality.

Spotlight is smart enough to know that it doesn’t have to tell its audience when to feel frustrated, repulsed, and outraged—the facts speak for themselves. The Spotlight team naturally faces resistance from the Church and their lawyers, but, somewhat surprisingly, also from the community. Boston is a largely Catholic community after all (each of the Spotlight reporters is a lapsed Catholic); but more than that, they resist against having to acknowledge such an endemic problem exists, as if by denying the problem, they escape implication. Even the Globe staff had mishandled and buried past stories about sexual abuse by priests. One person who helped the Church cover up abuse cases says that he was just doing his job. The reporters of the Spotlight team are also just doing their jobs, and fortunately they are very good at their jobs.

Nominees: Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin, and Blye Pagon Faust, Producers

Director: Tom McCarthy

Screenplay: Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer

Cast: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams

Production Companies: Anonymous Content, First Look Media, Participant Media, Rocklin/Faust

Distributor: Open Road Films

Release Date: November 6^th, 2015

Total Nominations: 6, including Bes Picture

Other Nominations: Director-Tom McCarthy, Supporting Actor-Mark Ruffalo, Supporting Actress-Rachel McAdams, Original Screenplay-Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Editing-Tom McArdle