DIRECTOR: Tom McCarthy LEAD CAST: Mark
Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley
Tucci SCREENWRITER: Tom
McCarthy & Josh Singer PRODUCER:
Blye Pagon Faust, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin & Michael Sugar EDITOR: Tom McArdle MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Howard Shore GENRE: Biographical Drama CINEMATOGRAPHER: Masanobu Takayanagi DISTRIBUTOR: Open Road Films LOCATION: United States RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs. 15 minutes
Technical
assessment: 4
Moral
assessment: 3
CINEMA
rating: V18
Spotlight is
about the efforts of a team of crack journalists of The Boston Globe working on a story of sex abuse committed largely
by clergymen of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The story was kept hidden for so long
by The Boston Globe itself despite
the incriminating information provided by the lawyers and victims in the
earlier years. To make up for such omission, the “spotlight” team—editor Walter
“Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) and reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo),
Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James)—is
commissioned by the paper’s new chief, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) to reinvestigate the
issue. After
diligently gathering evidences and testimonies from people concerned including
the victims themselves—and the team’s searing concern over the possible consequences
of unearthing the truth—the Boston Globe publishes the story to a shocked
public.
If only the Oscars had an award for Best Ensemble, Spotlight’s actors would romp away with
it hands down. There are no villains,
heroes, lead characters, or stars in Spotlight
because the film’s spotlight is on the powerful material, which a power-packed
cast has given justice to by their on-target performances. The Oscars’ Best Film for 2015 focuses
the limelight on a newsroom crisis involving professional journalists—whose
forte is in-depth investigation of local stories—played with such incredibly
credible finesse by: Keaton as the even-keeled news editor, Ruffalo, McAdams
and Carroll as bulldog reporters contributing their distinctive traits as
meticulous fact-diggers in an American city that would rather look the other
way in the face of a crackling and definitely damaging controversy.
Spotlight’s dramatic tug of war is caused not by the
perennial conflict between right and wrong, or good and evil, but from ethical
and moral struggles experienced by the journalists who must decide what to do
with the time bomb ticking away in their hands. Some viewers think Spotlight
is a film no Catholic should see; some say it’s a film no Catholic should
miss. CINEMA would hesitate to
make such sweeping generalizations because whatever damage the expose can do to
the image of the Catholic Church has been done by the actual media coverage of
the real-life controversy in early 2002, to be exact. Spotlight is not
an expose in itself but a close look into what went on inside the Boston Globe newsroom and at its editorial
board meetings before the public disclosure that rocked the staunchly Catholic
community of Boston. It is not
about flaws in the priesthood; it is about a landmark moment in
journalism. In fairness, CINEMA
must say director Tom McCarthy handled the material with equal parts skill and
respect. In the hands of an
opportunistic filmmaker, the story could have been milked, molded, and marketed
like any sensational tabloid material, but Spotlight
instead treated the true story not only clinically and level-headedly but with
empathy as well.
