WISCONSIN
Chippewa Herald
LARRY ANNETT For The Herald
IF YOU GO
“Spotlight”
Now showing at Micon Cinema in Eau Claire
Rated R, 2hr., 20min.
Showtimes:
Wednesday, Jan. 6 -Thursday, Jan. 7, 7:25 p.m.
Friday, Jan. 8 – Sunday, Jan. 10, 9:40 p.m.
Friday, Dec. 25 – Thursday, Dec. 31: 1, 4, 7 and 10 p.m.
Spotlight (now playing at Micon — Eau Claire) is a lightly fictionalized story of the team of Boston Globe reporters who in 2002 exposed pedophile priests and the Catholic Church’s attempts to cover-up their behavior.
How do you make a movie about horrific child abuse without showing the abusers, much less the abuse itself? Even documentaries show the crime scene and dwell on the emotional recollections of the survivors. But writer/director Tom McCarthy has built an engaging narrative where the action is largely limited to watching reporters plead with their sources to tell them the truth.
Although this story eventually became an international scandal, its seeds could not have found a more fertile soil than Boston, a city obsessed with ethnic politics and a church that dominates the city’s working classes — a city where every confrontation carries the weight of tribal loyalties.
The movie’s story is not about child abuse per se, but about how a small group of tenacious reporters uncovered the priests’ behavior and how the church marshalled its resources to protect itself. As one of the reporters tells a church lawyer, “we’ve got two stories here: the sexual abuse by priests and the story of a group of lawyers who have turned child abuse by priests into a cottage industry. We’re going to print one — you decide.” The crimes may be unforgivable, but the cover-up is unconscionable.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.