Spotlight

I wasn't willing to watch this film until I found a way to filter out most of the swear words. Sometimes filtering can ruin a movie just as much as the swearing itself but in the case of "Spotlight", I still was able to enjoy watching it despite the muted moments where there was swearing. I was mostly impressed by plot as it thickens scene by scene. Other noteworthy features include the cinematography, editing and how well the other cinematic elements worked together to tell the story. I feel this film did some make pretty uncomfortable insinuations and while this may not have been the objective of the filmmakers, we should not neglect the power that film has on swaying public opinion. Despite this, I am not offended by the story of this movie.

The first scene was neat because from a design and cinematographic standpoint, 1976 is contrasted with the subsequent scene set in 2001 quite well. The cinematography throughout the rest of the film had a lot of white shades and this created realism much like with Clint Eastwood-directed movies. Because of this color choice, you feel the plainness of a practical office space. While watching this movie, I kept reminding myself that while the Catholic Church has a huge problem, that doesn't mean every large institution has a huge problem of its own in similar scale. Every government has corruption and every church has "bad apples". Sometime, these problems and cover-ups are large in size such as in the case of the systematic problem in Boston but not all the time. What makes the movie entertaining is that as the plot moves forward, the extent of the cover-up by the church grows. The first scene of Phil Saviano gets the movie rolling. I liked how he brought up spiritual abuse. This movie not only explores the evil of sexual abuse but also the evil of using religion to do unrighteous things and how it creates confusion & trauma for so many good people. A big plot point in the film is when the journalists see the phrase "sick leave" on the directory next to the names of suspected pedophile priests. Once the cover up becomes bigger, they use the directory not to confirm cases but to find them by looking for the fake designations. The subsequent montage is noteworthy. I love the long shot as Matt makes his way from his house to the rehab house in his neighborhood. Another important story moment is when Baron tells Spotlight to stop going after individual priests, regardless of how high the number may be, and instead go after Cardinal Law and the church as an institution in order to expose the systematic cover up. If they do a story on just the priests, it will be the same kind of noise as before albeit bigger and it will cause no change. Many times in this movie we see large church building in the background. This is done to help those not familiar with Boston in understanding just how religious Boston is (the Catholic Church is the largest church in the area). When Sasha comes across Ronald Paquin who admits to molesting, it becomes apparent that some victims pass the abuse along to others. The real problem definitely becomes the system of covering up the abuse. I am sure that many of the priests did what they did for their own gratification but others may be involved simply because they are victims themselves. We have the argument scene between Mike and Robby to remind us that proving Law knew is only one step and the true target is the system. Considering this is a true story, it is impossible to ignore how 9/11 affected this investigation because both occurred in the same year. It is understandable that such a catastrophe would have delayed Spotlight's story. I love the climax as the story is printed and is released with Matt putting copies of the paper on the doorstop of the rehab house in his neighborhood.

I think the biggest mistake this film makes is that they accidentally smear religion as a whole. Four scenes come to mind as examples of this. The first is the scene with Sipe telling Spotlight via telephone that statistically, 6% of priests commit these acts. The characters are shocked to realize that for Boston it translates into ninety priests. The film however causes you to forget that while the 6% needed to be identified and punished, the other 94% of priests in Boston are not pedophiles. In my opinion, they should have included spoken lines that conveyed this message such as "The 94% statistic should be 100%." The second scene is on the porch between Mike and Sacha. Mike talks about giving up going back to church because of this story he is working on. The "Silent Night" montage and the scene with Sasha's grandmother reading the story are the third and fourth scenes respectably. If the filmmakers had been a little clearer that the enemy is not religion, I would feel more comfortable. The film seems to imply that religion is bad because it can be used to commit evil. Funny enough, the Bible predicts this in Isaiah 29:13 which says "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me." I get some consolation in knowing that the co-writer of this movie, Josh Singer, explained that his goal with the film was to show the power of journalism. Director Tom McCarthy himself came from a Catholic family and both he & Singer are not out to destroy anyone's faith. I believe Singer and I am also glad he helped to tell a story about how a newspaper can make a big impact if their research is done properly and not hastily. I just wish the filmmakers had made a few changes because the film itself speaks louder than even they can and some people may get the wrong message.

I didn't know this until after seeing "Spotlight" but the last time McCarthy was nominated at the Oscars was for co-writing one of my favorite Pixar films, "Up". That was a big surprise to me and I also was pleased to find out that he wrote "Million Dollar Arm". The acting is this film is quite good as evidenced by the Oscar nominations for Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. I knew I had seen Liev Schreiber before and half way through the show, I released that he is Sabretooth. I have seen other movies of his but his performance in "Spotlight" was so different from those other roles and I applaud him on that. Another familiar name I was happy to find in the credits is musical composer Howard Shore.

I was surprised when this show won Best Picture at the Academy Awards because the only other Oscar it got that night was for the screenplay (I did predict "Spotlight" winning that award though). While it didn't win any Golden Globes, its cast did win the SAG for Best Cast and that should have been a tip-off that it would win Best Picture. Other Academy Award nominations that I haven't mentioned yet by the way were for directing and editing. As a fun fact, because Michael Keaton was in "Birdman" the year earlier, he starred in back-to back Best Picture winners just like John Goodman for Oscar-winning films from 2011 and 2012. Also, this movie was filmed in the actual offices of "The Boston Globe". The newspaper in real life earned a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for this story. It is laughable that the church basically promoted Cardinal Law after resigning in Boston but he is now retired. I still think "Room" should have won Best Picture that year but "Spotlight" was a well-made film nevertheless. The film deserved all its Oscar nominations and while its subject matter did rattle a few of my nerves, it could have been so much worse.

4 Stars