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Importance of Newspapers Shines through in Film on Church-abuse Scandal

By James Verniere
Boston Herald
November 6, 2015

http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/movies/2015/11/importance_of_newspapers_shines_through_in_film_on_church_abuse_scandal

TEAMWORK: Michael Keaton, above left, Mark Ruffalo, above right and Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James play a team of journalists in ‘Spotlight.’

From “The Front Page” and “His Girl Friday” to “All the President’s Men” and “The Paper,” America has been in love with newspaper movies. This gives “Spotlight,” a film from New Jersey-born director and co-writer Tom McCarthy (“Win Win,” “The Cobbler”) about the Boston Globe’s award-winning investigation into the Catholic church child sexual abuse scandal, both the urgency of front-page headlines and a certain backward, nostalgic air.

Remember newspapers? Weren’t they great?

The action begins in 2001. The New York Times-owned Globe has a new editor from Miami named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber, nailing the guy’s “Visit to a Small Planet” aura). Not long after unpacking, Baron asks editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton, stellar), who is supervised by Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), and Robinson’s “spotlight” team of reporters — Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — to look into why no prosecutions have resulted from church payments to settle sexual abuse cases.

Holy Whitey Bulger, is it possible the Boston church has been able to suppress the truth for decades?

The screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer (“Fringe”) gives a shout­out to the Boston Phoenix, which broke the story, but it’s a left-handed compliment. The case involves “sealed documents” the church desperately does not want to come to light and the number of priests who have molested children in the Boston area and what disgraced Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou, “Blue Bloods”) knew and when he knew it.

A key figure in the investigation is attorney Mitch Garabedian (a wonderfully woolly Stanley Tucci), an Armenian-American and self-proclaimed outsider who bonds with fellow traveler Rezendes, a Portuguese-American lapsed Catholic, and operates beyond the church’s usual reach. Robinson invests a lot of faith in an old friend, attorney Jim Sullivan (an outstanding Jamey Sheridan), who has advised the church in these matters. Robby urges his friend to “get on the right side of this.” More than a few Catholics suggest Baron, who lived in the South End while he was at the Globe and was my neighbor, has an “agenda,” perhaps because he’s a Jew and “single.”

In addition to being a great newspaper movie, “Spotlight” is a deeply engrossing tale of how journalists uncover facts, using shoe leather, scrupulous research (incriminating church directories!) and one-on-one interviews. One character who emerges is slightly off-putting, activist-victim Phil Saviano (Neal Huff). Trying to provide cover for the church is “see-no-evil” Boston attorney Eric Macleish (Billy Crudup). Lensing by Masanobu Takayanagi (“Black Mass”) and music by Howard Shore add to the classiness. A “Silent Night” montage does not quite rise to the level of “The God­father,” and “Spotlight” lacks flourish. But this great ensemble effort is one of the best films of the year.

 

 

 

 

 




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