There’s a passing scene from Spotlight in which Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James), a Boston Globe investigative reporter, interviews the mother of a sexual abuse victim. As they chat on the porch of her old New England home, director Tom McCarthy zooms out, expanding the frame to reveal the figurative root of their conversation. He settles on an encompassing visual: a Catholic Church, divinely constructed and with a Golden Cross perched at its top, hovering over the home in the background, like a watermark. McCarthy visits dozens of similar homes throughout this movie, and he tends to keep the focus tight on conversation. But that Cross is always there, if only by implication: unassuming residents live in their unassuming homes, with that community staple watching from above.
That single image, which all but sneaks into frame, says everything about Spotlight, a film that progresses with rigorous intelligence and attention to detail without ever showing its hand. A journalistic slow-burn in the vein of All the President’s Men, Spotlight sacrifices sweep for realism, and glorification for nuance. Tackling the Boston Globe’s revelatory reporting on the Catholic Priest child molestation scandal, McCarthy resists every sanctimonious and simplistic tendency in his depiction. He follows a group of journalists, but look deeper and you’ll see his own investigation of a city, one that’s driven by complex calibrations of sympathy and affection. His interest in an institutional failure works alongside his documentation of a resounding institutional success, in which a community grudgingly, inadvertently came to terms with its grand moral failure. His is a movie of resolve – of a reporting team, of victims, of bystanders and of perpetrators finally goaded into doing what’s right. What we see are not acts of heroism, or even success. Spotlight shows people waking up, often by simply looking one another in the eye.
McCarthy captures that idea better than most any American filmmaker out there. Spotlight, in many ways, feels like a continuation of the director’s work, from The Station Agent to The Visitor to Win Win (okay, maybe not The Cobbler), only now he’s operating on a bigger scale. He sketches out his characters with striking specificity, observing how they connect, locate new sources of empathy and assert new beliefs and priorities through the magic of interaction. There’s a rhythm to it, too – the pounding drum-playing of The Visitor, the chaotic wrestling duets in Win Win. In Spotlight, it’s reporting – staff meetings surrounded by piles of clips stuffed in manilla folders, door-to-door questionings with neighbors and colleagues, library all-nighters and winless courtroom battles. The work is gritty, long and indefinite, but McCarthy hones in on its human side. An interview between a reporter and a local nearly always comes down to a “How’d you know?” – it could be shared knowledge of a neighborhood, a corner store, a high school teacher, a secret spot by the bay. For victims, there's comfort in that mutual understanding; for the reporters, there’s horror in the building realization of a citywide epidemic they were too preoccupied – perhaps, too embedded in the system – to notice.
Spotlight maintains a close focus on the particulars of the case, a procedural-like structure that serves a thematic purpose and deepens the film’s impact. Its middle stretch is all but consumed by interviews and conversations; each takes place in a distinct location, and each is leveled with a distinct perspective. When local reporter Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the head of the special “Spotlight” investigative team, presses old acquaintances for information on the potential cover-up, he’s either on the golf course or at a club gathering, surrounded by resistant insiders. Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), a zanier member of the team, meanwhile probes an Armenian lawyer demanding justice (played superbly by Stanley Tucci) – a self-described “outsider” – and they chat in a sparsely-populated restaurant, sipping on soup in-between silences. Every character in Spotlight feels just right, from the foods they eat to the places they frequent to the homes in which they dwell.
That authenticity is what sets Spotlight apart. The disturbing scandal, which drives the film from moment to moment, ripples through the characters and the city at large. Keaton’s face is overcome with silent anguish over the course of the movie, as Robby’s feelings of guilt and horror gradually overwhelm. Another reporter on the team, Sacha (Rachel McAdams), dines with her devout grandmother on a regular basis; with each passing meal, she needs to hold a little more in, her discomfort turning palpable. Spotlight takes its story into the characters’ lives, and into the community’s spirit. The Globe team is strident, patient and incredibly meticulous – but their work is never treated with grandiosity. The film depicts reporting as the bridge between institutions and residents, from the elite to the public. The Boston Globe is “still very much a local paper,” as one character muses – a city-wide chronicle trusted to act in best interests of those it tells its stories to.
The production is measured, with McCarthy – as he’s one to do – finely tuning the levels of emotion and intensity. He never indulges. Scenes are stitched together by the great Howard Shore’s (The Lord of the Rings) muted piano theme, a tasteful and quietly moving compliment to the developing story. And in its imagery, the film is subtle but vivid. Masanobu Takayangani’s evocative photography captures the grind of quality journalism, his master shots of the newsroom in particular flowing like a series of historical tableaux. Though tame and diligent, Spotlight builds with cinematic force.
A closing montage to “O Holy Night” runs the risk of turning treacly before McCarthy smoothly fades into piano, the composition creeping back in with haunting unpredictability. In that regard, this is a more thorough film than you might expect. It's rich with details, whether in a quick glance, a clever comeback or the way a character glugs their beer. These idiosyncracies add to Spotlight’s punch and strengthen its foundation. McCarthy, through his masterful command, paints a picture that tells the underlying narrative: in showing Boston at its best and worst, and in avoiding easy characterizations, he elucidates with harrowing principle how the unthinkable stayed that way for so very long.
McCarthy has described Spotlight as his “love letter to journalism.” His cast, uniformly excellent and vanity-free, keeps the reporters in a human light. His Boston feels, above all, lived-in – real. Through every door-knock and drop-by, the place comes to bristling life. And through every interview and every revelation, it comes into perspective. McCarthy doesn’t drop any bombshells; he knows the world doesn’t change. (We don’t learn even get that obligatory “Where are they now?” montage.) Instead, there’s a hunger for discovery in his methods – discovery as people look into each other’s eyes, and hear their fears and their traumas and their shameful secrets. The film’s last shot, as artful and vital a frame as any piece of Red Sox memorabilia, features the Spotlight staff back in the office, with the story printed, the phones ringing, the stacks of manilla folders no thinner. There’s no glamor, no triumphant swelling of the score – not even a pat on the back.
Spotlight merely ends with an acknowledgment of the job. But as such a rich and wise acknowledgment – as one dedicated to the stories of individuals, families and their communities, as journalism at its purest should always be – the film makes for one hell of a love letter.
Grade: A