UNITED STATES
First Things
by Philip Lawler
1 . 8 . 16
Any major American newspaper would immediately fire a reporter who was caught using composite characters or inventing quotations for his stories. Hollywood naturally plays by different rules. A film “based on” a true story is considered acceptable; “recreated” dialogue is the norm. We expect print journalists to report on things as they are, while filmmakers are free to depict things as they might have been.
Spotlight, in which director Tom McCarthy recounts how the Boston Globe blew the lid off a simmering sex-abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, is a paradoxical product. The film pays tribute to dogged investigative reporters, while itself blithely ignoring the standards to which those journalists adhered. Somehow it works. Treating a historical episode as a drama, Spotlight successfully conveys the essence of the story: the frustrations and triumphs of the reporters, the enduring agony of abuse victims, and the flavor of life in a city dominated by disaffected Irish Catholics.
None of the characters in Spotlight behaves quite like the real people I know. (The portrayal of Cardinal Bernard Law, by Len Cariou, is particularly weak, conveying neither the strength of personality nor the tragic flaws of that unhappy prelate.) Yet the actors are thoroughly convincing insofar as they show how their characters might have behaved in given circumstances. Strong performances (particularly by Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes and Michael Keaton as Walter Robinson) and lively pacing drive the story forward. And the plot line—the breaking of a major news story—sustains the excitement.
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