The Weekly Scene: Spotlight (2015)

4 perfect-journalism-capers out of 4

On Jan. 6, 2002, in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that gripped the American psyche only a few months earlier, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published an article that rattled the collective faith of an entire city. In an article written by Michael Rezendes, and researched by the entire four-person team, Spotlight revealed that the Roman Catholic Church was involved in a sex abuse scandal that spanned decades, countless parishes, and over 130 victims.

Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is a biographical film that portrays the events leading up to the publishing of the article. It is a film whose characters argue and agree that they were complicit in a widespread institutional failure that spanned across cultural, social, and environmental boundaries. By the time the film’s credits finally roll, one’s sense of justice is shattered. There is no justice in Spotlight. Indeed, there’s no suggestion that victims could have been done more to have their pain heard. Instead, McCarthy’s film is a simple acknowledgement that things could have been different had more people listened.

[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]What becomes startlingly evident is the methodical hand used to craft Spotlight.[/pullquote]

What becomes startlingly evident is the methodical hand used to craft Spotlight. There’s an underlying anger to McCarthy’s script—co-written by Josh Singer—that touches on the feelings of betrayal and anguish at the centre of the Catholic church’s countless sex abuse scandals. Where McCarthy succeeds is in his ability to channel that anger into productive—often meaningful—dialogue about manner in which great social power enables individuals to abuse others. It’s undeniable that Spotlight is a film about the city of Boston and its inhabitants; however, change the characters, change the location, change the overarching narrative, and Spotlight would remain a story about power and the way we as a planet interact with and often ignore victims of abuse.

Interestingly enough, Spotlight is not a film mired in hopelessness. The manner in which an entire city’s infrastructure can collectively ignore a widespread and horrifyingly prevalent problem is worrisome, but Spotlight is an ultimately hopeful film. It’s a call-to-arms for a higher calibre of journalism, and a higher calibre of humanism. In an era where filmmakers are enamoured with characters whose depravity is only surpassed by their blatant disregard for all things human, McCarthy’s and Singer’s script argues that the power of a collective citizenry can easily overcome even the worst of circumstances. Heroes, to the Spotlight team, are simply men and women doing their jobs.

For a moment, however, one must examine Spotlight as a critical analysis of the state of journalism, and the state of popular media.

The film begins with the hiring of Liev Schriber’s Marty Baron—a man who served as the Globe’s editor from 2001 to 2012. Baron is, for lack of a better term, a newsman; Spotlight’s earliest scenes, however, paint Baron as a company lacky looking to find a way to ensure the fiscal well-being of the paper—even at the risk of the lives of those who work at the Globe. However, McCarthy’s film is not just a story about journalists, it’s a story about journalism and the way it interacts with culture as a whole. That Baron ultimately forces Michael Keaton’s Walter Robinson—the editor of the Spotlight team—to investigate the sex abuse scandal is portrayed as an indictment of the manner in which eager reporters ignore important stories in favour of the lighter pulp that quickly fills the bellies of their readership. Fascinating is that Spotlight often appears disinterested in the sex abuse scandal itself. Moments of unfathomable impact occur in utterly mundane scenes. Instead, McCarthy’s film is a thesis on the chain of command, and the manner in which it allows low-level employees to avoid moral introspection by simply fulfilling the commands of their superiors.

Once again, however, Spotlight is a hopeful film. If simply doing one’s job can lead to the abuse of hundreds of children across an entire city, then the opposite is also true. After all, the reporters at the Spotlight team were also simply doing their jobs. Therefore, when characters express their rage at being unable to help those whose lives have been so deeply affected by abuse, it’s because they feel responsible as journalists who have failed their readers, their city, and their species.

Journalism is an imperfect process—of this, there must be no doubt. Humans are at the core of every publication, and humanity is essential for the perpetuation of the trade. What Spotlight proved, and what Spotlight proves, is that the most positive social change begins with a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens.