Personally I'm of the opinion that for a paper to best perform its function, it really needs to stand alone.
Spotlight
(2015)
The two
Best Picture Oscar contenders focussing on recent real world scandals take
approaches that couldn’t be more different, yet both are appropriate to their
respective material. Adam McKay musters interest in the inaccessible background
to the subprime crisis (and from thence the decade-long downer of global
economic meltdown and its aftermath) through a poppy, absurdist spin. Tom
McCarthy treats Spotlight with contrastingly
sombre sobriety, refraining even from the subdued thriller mechanics that
informed the reportage genre’s greatest avatar, All the President’s Men. Occasionally, his picture allows the
tensions involved in getting the story to press intrude, but mostly, and
rightly, McCarthy is intent on just telling it as it is, with no frills or
pirouettes.
Both The Big Short and Spotlight have a similar idea at their core, though, a “Who knew?”
that informs the outrage. If The Big
Short promotes the view that only its motley band of anti-heroes had the
insight to see the extent of the damage poised to rain down on the financial
system, Spotlight is unequivocal about
those responsible for brushing the Boston Roman Catholic Church child sex abuse
scandal under the carpet; everyone is. Even The Boston Globe, the newspaper
that eventually breaks the story, is complicit in leaving stones unturned. As
Stanley Tucci’s crusading attorney Mitchell Garabedian tells Mark Ruffalo’s
eager reporter Michael Rezendes, “If it
takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one”.
Garabedian,
of Armenian extraction, suggests his lack of Boston Irish credentials lends him
the freedom to rock the boat, unimpinged by the instinct to rally around the
status quo, or take at face value assurances of one bad apple. Likewise, Liev
Schrieber’s Marty Baron, the new editor of the Globe and its first Jewish incumbent,
has no preconceptions about pursuing an already covered story, at which his team
initially blanche (but in which the energetic Rezendes is eager to sniff around).
Investigative
journalism is naturally cinematic, if often narratively dense, and, while Spotlight may lack the paranoid
claustrophobia of Alan J Pakula’s aforementioned President’s Men, or the visual panache of Michael Mann’s The Insider, it’s every bit as commanding
and diligent in telling its story. From the realisation that these predatory priests
(shown ruthlessly seeking out the most vulnerable and afflicted) are just
circulated to another parish when their sins are found out, to tracking down
suspects through the Church’s absentee codes, a system that perpetuates, even
effectively encourages, abuse is revealed.
Tom
McCarthy, being an actor (he played a journalist in the final season of The Wire), is an actor’s director, and,
as with earlier successes The Station
Agent and The Visitor, all eyes
are on them, what they are doing and saying. He has assembled an outstanding
ensemble, with the Spotlight team (the Globe’s dedicated investigative unit)
headed up by Michael Keaton’s Walter “Robby” Robinson and also comprising
Ruffalo (occasionally Rezendes is prodded for melodramatic moments that seem a
little at odds with the overall tone, such as his silent rumination in the church
foyer and grandstanding demand that the story be published forthwith), Brian
d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams (her Sacha Pfeiffer doesn’t really stand out in
any way, though, making the Oscar nomination slightly surprising).
John
Slattery brings the wiry intelligence he displayed in Mad Men to Assistant Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr (son of
Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee Sr, immortalised in President’s Men by Jason Robards), while Schreiber, currently
playing a Bostonian in Ray Donovan,
is a particular standout, lending Baron quiet assuredness and determination. Tucci
knows a great character part when he sees one, as does (uncredited) Billy
Crudup, personifying the other side of the legal coin with reptilian warmth;
his attorney is responsible for settling many of the church’s cases (out of
court). Unknown actors playing the abuse victims are also highly accomplished,
including Neal Huff and Michael Cyril Creighton.
McCarthy
and co-writer Josh Singer ensure we’re apprised of the levels of collusion in
this, from the police, to the legal world, and the schools (although, the
political spectrum doesn’t really intrude). Keaton’s Robinson must guiltily admit
to his own effective burying of the bigger story eight years earlier, but his
deeper motivations on this are left for the viewer to discern. It is easy to comprehend
the creeping defensiveness in action, the allowing of unconscionable situations
to continue unchecked under one’s nose, lest it shatter the foundation of one’s
reality (one mother is cited whose seven children have been abused). The tangle
of conspiratorial legality and omission that prevents the journalists from
accessing what ought to be public documents is eventually unravelled by further
legal nouse, but even then there are further obstacles before the material is finally
accessed.
Singer said
the object of Spotlight was chiefly
to emphasise the value of good journalism, rather than operate as an exposé of the Catholic Church, which certainly comes over in its telling from
the investigators perspective. But the incendiary nature of the actual case is
intrinsic to why Spotlight is
effective, with the end credits providing a long list of the various places and
countries where scandals have been brought to light, the implication being that
this was a game-changer in recognising the issue (for which the Globe won the 2003
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service). However, it does lead one to question what
has really changed in the intervening time; the essential story is now so pervasive
that the words paedophile and priest are virtually synonymous in the public’s
mind, yet the edifice of the Roman Catholic Church has not crumbled. Richard
Jenkins’ unseen psycho-therapist estimates that 6% of priests are abusers, so
perhaps the devoted flock merely continue to rationalise that it’s not
happening in their particular backyard.
In the UK, the
attention has mostly been focussed on celebrity paedophiles over the past few
years, but it hasn’t stop the supposed bastion of illumination that is the media
from shutting the conversation down when really dangerous ground is encroached
upon (Tom Watson daring to suggest Edward Heath might have been up to no good;
even Private Eye got in on righteously lambasting Watson, indicating its establishment-pricking
veneer extends only so far); a few sacrificial celebs and dead MPs are fine,
just as long as they don’t lead really high up the pole. The result is the
further erosion of already long-since undercut faith in the media (what place
investigative journalism in a world where most papers, owned by powerful
corporations, cobble reports together from other news outlets and spend their
greater energies on fatuous comment pieces?) and the increasing scouring of the
Internet for the truth (be if legitimately-sourced or scuttlebutt).
Spotlight may be a little too restrained, too conscientious,
too balanced, to take Oscar glory from flashier competitors (it was my tip for
the top last month), and it’s certainly no surprise it missed out on a
nomination for Best Score (Howard Shore’s drippy piano is a tad too reverential
for my tastes). It might be appropriate to honour it now, though, before a
movie with investigative journalism at its core needs to be set several decades
in the past (rather than just the one) to be remotely plausible.
