Journalistic courage is a timely topic, and the example given by the team in Spotlight shows how legwork, doggedness and conviction can rattle the pillars of the establishment when society needs it.
Tom McCarthy's film -- losing at the Golden Globes but still a strong contender at the upcoming Oscars -- is based on the true account of The Boston Globe investigative journalists who in 2002 dig up the child molestation cases committed by a large number of Catholic priests. This is not a thriller -- no gun is fired and no exchanges of secret envelopes -- it is rather a story of reporters at work, and of their procedural, laborious efforts to piece together clues and details, testimonies and confessions, in order to stir the dust that has been swept under the rug for too long.
An inevitable comparison is Alan Pakula's All The President's Men, the consummate journalism film from 1976 about how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation. Spotlight is clearly modelled after that film, though it's leaner, less dense, slightly more earnest and its glorification of old-school journalism comes in the way it looks at this profession with respect and honesty -- not veneration or arrogance.
The ensemble cast makes up the reporters and editors of The Boston Globe. Michael Keaton is Walter, the head of the investigative team, and his crew include Sacha (Rachel McAdams), Mike (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt (Brian D'Arcy James). The paper has just hired a new editor, the solemn Jewish man Marty (Live Schreiber), who is not a Bostonian -- and his status as an "outsider" lets him see things differently. Marty suggests the leads on the reports of a Catholic priest's misbehaviour and how the cardinal of the Boston archdiocese is sitting on top of it. The readership of the Globe, someone said in a news meeting, is majority Catholic, and now a Jewish editor wants to dig up the skeleton? One test of journalism is always about what the readers want and what should be written about -- in this case the answer is clear.
Walter and his team set out looking for information. This is the early 2000s, when news gathering still means physical labour; they go around knocking on doors hoping someone would talk, and they sift through records and old files in libraries and archives, because there is no online database (and this is the US!). They start out with suspicion and a hypothesis -- but as more victims turn up and begin to speak, the team find out that they're about to drag out a massive chunk of rotten meat from the Church's basement. One major difference between Spotlight and All The President's Men is that there is no villain in this new film. Spotlight is not a David-vs-Goliath story -- it's about David at work, fighting off dead ends, deadlines and despair, while Goliath, the Church, rarely appears in the story. To the viewers looking for a standard thriller where heroic reporters destroy an evil empire, the film won't give them that kind of sensational entertainment. Spotlight is about men and women performing their jobs, and the painstaking process of obtaining, confirming and fighting for hidden information that serves public good. Most of the scenes take place in the newspaper's office, an open-plan newsroom where the phones keep ringing and papers keep shuffling. The sense we get is that, no matter how big the scandal is or how embarrassing the establishment becomes from the expose, the story is not about heroism. It's about professionalism.
This is an ensemble piece, and each cast member complements the humming energy sparked by one another. Michael Keaton is an actor who can stand out without actually standing out -- it is preposterous thinking that he was once Batman, and even Birdman. But once again, it's Mark Ruffalo who's probably most memorable by turning what seems like a bland role into something with genuine vitality, and maybe with a soul. He plays a reporter who begs, coaxes and convinces sources to give him tips, leads, scraps of information, whatever he believes to help him complete the picture. He doesn't want to bring down the Church; he just wants to know the whole story. Isn't it ironic that working hard is a Protestant principle and not a Catholic one?
Anyway, I recommend Spotlight. In a coincidence of programming, another film that tells the story the US in mid-2000s is The Big Short, is in cinemas now, and which recounts the spectacular collapse of the housing mortgage through black humour. Both are contenders for the Oscars (the nominations are this morning Thailand time), and both show how cinema can remember the unpleasant times some people have to go through in real life, and maybe to tell ourselves not to repeat them again.
