Spotlight (2015)

From left: Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy
Adams, Michael Keaton and John Slattery in "Spotlight."

The most ironic moment in “Spotlight” takes place when a priest, worried that the internet might be providing too much information, laments during a sermon. “Knowledge is one thing,” he cautions, “but faith is another.” Most among his congregation nod along approvingly, but Sacha Pheiffer, a reporter for the Boston Globe, looks on with a mixture of disillusionment and incredulity. She knows hypocrisy when she sees it.

By this point, Pheiffer and her colleagues have figured out that the leader of the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law, reportedly knew that one of his priests, Fr. John Geoghan, had a history of predatory child molestation. But rather than removing Geoghan from the priesthood, Law shuffled him from parish to parish for years, where his abuse continued.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script by McCarthy and Josh Singer, “Spotlight” takes its name from the team of investigative reporters—including Pheiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) and editor Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton)—who broke the lid off the watershed case with a comprehensive and blistering series of articles in 2002.

Using the Geoghan case as a springboard, the Globe ultimately revealed that more than 80 priests in the Boston Archdiocese committed various acts of rape and pedophilia on hundreds children over three decades, crimes the Church carefully kept out of public view by paying out hush money to scores of victims and seizing official documents. The newspaper eventually published over 600 articles about the scandal and won the Pulitzer Prize.

“Spotlight” is really like two great movies—one is an infuriating, spellbinding document of the most deeply immoral and sinister chapter in the Catholic Church’s history; the other is a soaring, rapturous love letter to the newspaper business itself and a celebration of passionate, professional journalism.

Watching the smart, savvy reporters in this movie painstakingly doing their work—in the office on a Sunday, working from home, researching in the library until it closes, jotting down notes, making phone calls, checking facts, knocking on doors, interviewing subjects, taking more notes—one is reminded of Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane” when he took over at the New York Inquirer and justified turning his new publisher’s office into his personal apartment by declaring, quite succinctly, that the news goes on for 24 hours a day.

There's a wonderful shot that celebrates the subtle, vibrant pulse of a daily city newspaper. Walter is chatting with editor Ben Bradlee (John Slattery) about the story. In between them, at the far end of the newsroom, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)—the Globe’s intrepid, unpretentious new chief editor—sits in his office late in the day, still working.

Baron, a strikingly composed, baritone-voiced outsider who daringly suggested the Globe take on the church in the first place, is perhaps the unsung hero of the film. At a time when the internet was already beginning to chip away at advertising revenues and the newsroom was staring at cutbacks, Baron committed resources to an important story and showed his faith in the value of essential journalism.

“Spotlight” is a reminder of the measure of stories the public gets when honest and talented reporters are doing their jobs. It’s also about what happens when a venerable daily newspaper functioning at a high level—telling important truths, letting people know what's going on, holding suspects accountable, and just being a responsible citizen—becomes the eyes and ears, the legitimate moral center, of an American city.