SPOTLIGHT is a
film about power.
Set amidst clerical
child abuse, there are few children and even fewer priests. Victims
are referred to in lists, court cases and newspaper clips. Their
appearances, though telling, are brief. SPOTLIGHT
is a film about journalists, lawyers and senior church people, lay
and clerical.
The city of Boston in
2001 presents as rain sodden and grey, except for a thrilling
high-colour shot of Autumn trees, ablaze in gold and umber, used to
make the transition to the final sequences, playing out in a
Christmas season of grubby snow. The colour palette is almost black
and white. Sepias, creams and magnolia feature. The luminous green
globes on the lamps in the library are eerie and talismanic of the
dominant culture in the city.
The Boston Globe
understandably features the film and the Spotlight team in its
current on-line edition. The most obvious film echo is ALL
THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, set in the
Nixon-Watergate era. Are films about journalists in print media on
the way out?
The wonders of the
newspaper production facility of The Boston Globe
in the early 2000s are lovingly shown. The great news room, the staff
canteen, the industrial print plant, the definitive edition, carrying
the big story, tumbling into bundles for loading onto the fleet of
liveried trucks in the dispatch bay in the basement; these images are
reminiscent of numerous American films set in the days of the
dominance of print media.
The central drama is
driven by the investigative Spotlight team within The
Boston Globe,
headed by ex-Batman, Michael Keaton as 'Robby' Robinson, alumnus of a
good Catholic school and proud Bostonian. They are fired up by the
arrival of a new editor, evident outsider Marty Baron, played by Liev
Schreiber, who looks like Jurgen Klopp's slightly older brother. The
loss of faith and, with it, the loss of an anchor of social and
cultural stability, is very well portrayed as a betrayal of trust, as
is the way institutional power elaborates and operates in acts of
commission and omission among groups of men (largely), tied by bonds
of kinship, ethnicity, social class, aspiration and religious
adherence.
The principals – Mark
Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, Rachel McAdams and Brian
d'Arcy James – are all excellent. Billy Crudup is a joy as a
self-serving lawyer, while victim and source, Phil Saviano, is
suitably edgy, hurt and fatalistic, as played by Neal Huff. Having
'the knowledge', psychotherapist Richard Sipe, never appear, yet
contribute fundamental research in phone conversations, adds
clandestine weight to the words of the uncredited Richard Jenkins.
SPOTLIGHT has
achieved nominations and awards, great reviews, good audiences and
box office returns. It will garner more and deservedly so. Best
hair-piece? Stanley Tucci's as victim-supporting lawyer, Garabedian.
Best scene? Garabedian talking about being an Armenian in Boston,
while eating soup in a diner. Best line? Neal Huff, as victim Phil
Saviano, asks
“How do you say 'no'
to God?”
