UNITED KINGDOM
Bristol 24/7
Robin Askew, January 25, 2016
Spotlight (15)
USA 2015 129 mins Dir: Thomas McCarthy Starring: Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery, Billy Crudup
Journalists adore films about fellow hacks, so Thomas McCarthy’s fact-based account of the exposure of a child abuse cover-up within the Boston archdiocese of the Catholic Church was guaranteed plenty of coverage even before it received Oscar nominations in all the main categories. And this is very much a film about a meticulous journalistic investigation. Anyone hoping for lurid images of leering paedo priests bearing down on small boys’ bottoms or a heart-rending in-depth exploration of the victims’ trauma is likely to come away disappointed.
Spotlight establishes its authenticity immediately with a setting that every journalist will recognise. Against the backdrop of plummeting circulation and advertising revenue, a new editor arrives trailing rumours that he’s a hatchet man brought in as part of a short-sighted strategy to preserve profits by sacking large swathes of the workforce. It’s 2001 and Martin Baron (Liev Schreiber) is very much an outsider at the Boston Globe, not least because he’s a Jew from Miami who finds himself overseeing a staff made up almost entirely of local Catholics. He immediately rejects the way the paper cosies up to local institutions, especially the Catholic Church, and announces his intention to make it “essential to its readers”. One story in particular catches his eye. A lawyer claims that Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston, knew that a paedophile priest had been abusing children and chose to do nothing about it. Concerned that his paper seems to have shown no interest in following this up, he instructs the sceptical, four-strong Spotlight investigative team to drop everything and start digging.
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