‘Spotlight’ shines light on scandal
(Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films via AP)
This photo provided by courtesy of Open Road Films shows, Rachel McAdams, from left, as Sacha Pfeiffer, Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes and Brian d’Arcy James as Matt Carroll, in a scene from the film, “Spotlight.”
November 6, 2015
In 2002, the investigation team of the Boston Globe, called ‘Spotlight’, uncovered a huge scandal about child abuse by pastors, which ultimately turned into a worldwide scandal that shattered the Catholic Church.
This movie tells the story of how the reporters found the story, investigated the details, and finally published it.
The movie is based on actual events, and the actors do an awesome job portraying mostly real-world people. The movie features Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber and Stanley Tucci and was written and directed by Tom McCarthy.
Ruffalo plays a journalist that gets closer to the story than is good for him; Keaton is the head of ‘Spotlight’, which divides him between his colleagues and former classmates that are now working as lawyers for the church; and Stanley Tucci is hardly recognizable wearing a toupee.
Also, art direction did a great job not stylizing the sets. The reporters’ offices are a mess, and except for a banquet of the Church, nothing is fancy in this movie.
Computers are huge as per the times, and everybody looks shockingly normal. This contributes to the story and ultimately grounds it, which makes the movie accessible to the audience.
Filming a story based on real events often limits the ability to tell a story properly, but not here. Even though we rarely see something other than reporters investigating, interviewing people, and digging in archives, this two-hour-long movie keeps you on the edge of your seat.
The more the journalists uncover, the more you also disbelieve the size of the scandal. Like ‘All the Presidents Men,’ this movie shines the light on investigating journalists. Once good journalists find a story, they dig deeper and deeper to uncover the whole scope of it.
What’s really remarkable about that movie is how engrossing it is. Watching it in a press screening, I was surprised when people applauded at certain scenes in the middle of a movie. For example, there is a scene about a pastor who tries to justify rape as an act of education, and the reporters dismiss his argument. It is so realistic you forget you are watching a movie at times. Never has 128 minutes felt so short to me.
Many people may see this movie critically, because of the Catholic Church’s role. They covered up the events for decades, and even after the uncovering they hardly cared for making things right, not even talking about the victims. However, this movie doesn’t condemn the Catholic Church, but rather the criminal acts its members committed.
This is similar to today’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that condemns criminal acts done by law enforcement officers. It does not condemn the police per se, which is important to understand since the perpetrators now and then try to hide within the whole institution rather than expose their own wrongdoings.
If you are a fan of true stories of underdogs against perpetrators or just well written, dialogue-based thrillers, you’ll be deeply satisfied with this movie. I give it a ten out of ten.
Spotlight was released Nov 6 and is directed by Tom McCarthy, with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery.
bernie law • Nov 11, 2015 at 11:33 am
“Spotlight” shows how difficult it is to get the truth out of an organized crime syndicate. A team of Boston journalists worked tirelessly to find out that the Catholic church knowingly was running a massive organized childrape crime syndicate in Boston and around the world back in a time when the Catholic had a powerful influence. It also shows how Catholic followers tried to help the church get away with it.
Make no mistake, this is a movie about organized crime, featuring the Catholic church, the largest organized childrape crime syndicate in the history of the US, and in BRUTAL defiance of Jesus in Matt 18:6-14, where Jesus said childrape was unforgivable.
The Catholic church’s organized crime syndicate is worse than Whitey Bulger’s from Black Mass. This movie shows how the Catholic church exhibited the same “code of silence” that the mafia has, without the honor, as they were protecting at least 249 “confessed” pedo-priests in Boston.
Whitey Bulger killed 20 adults. The creepy pedo-priests in the Catholic church raped over 1,000 children in Boston alone, thanks to at least 249 pedophile priests, hidden and protected by hundreds of other priests, including Cardinal Law. (Only 90 were known at the time of the movie, but credits at the end show 249).
The Catholic church admitted 4,329 substantiated, accused pedophile priests in the US in their own John Jay report of 2004, and of course they lied. The number is well over 6,900.
And the Catholic church hid & protected 100% of their known pedo-priests, worldwide (Matt 18:6-14). Cowardly, rampant, unforgivable evil, in brutal defiance of Jesus, has a name, and it is the Catholic church.