"Spotlight" Gripping Tale of Exposing Pedophile Priests

By Bruce C Steele
The Citizen-Times
November 19, 2015

http://www.citizen-times.com/story/entertainment/2015/11/19/spotlight-gripping-tale-exposing-pedophile-priests/75798252/

The real stars of the fact-based movie "Spotlight" are the no-name actors who portray the survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The familiar faces playing the Boston Globe investigative team — Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams — do great work, yet you can't entirely forget they're actors.

But the journalists' brief interviews with the damaged adults finally able to tell their stories — especially Michael Cyril Creighton as a gay man named Joe — put human, vulnerable faces on the atrocities covered up by the church across the world for decades. In those moments it's not just a story. It's a open wound at last given a chance to heal.

"Spotlight" may be the best movie about newspaper reporters since "The Killing Fields" or even "All the President's Men," a movie with which it has a lot in common, including a real-life editor named Ben Bradlee (John Slattery), here the son of the Washington Post editor. Mike (Rufallo) and Sacha (McAdams) are the Woodward and Bernstein, assisted by fellow reporter Matt (Brian d'Arcy James) and by Robby (Keaton), the leader of their investigative team, called Spotlight.

As in "All the President's Men," the top editor (Liev Schreiber) recognizes that a report on the crimes would be soon forgotten, while a smoking gun connecting the top dog to a systematic cover up might actually put a halt to the abuses. In this case the target is Boston's archbishop, Cardinal Law (Len Cariou), who has powerful network of minions and allies trying to bury the story "for the good of the church."

The time is 2001 — the attacks of 9/11 are part of the narrative — and it takes most of a year to put the story together. Maintaining steady suspense when the endpoint is well known is a talent few directors share, but "Spotlight" never flags.

Doing his best work to date, director Tom McCarthy ("Win Win," "The Visitor") keeps most scenes intensely intimate while juggling a couple dozen key characters. (Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup make deep impressions in smaller roles.) McCarthy's career-long focus on the nuances of interpersonal politics serves him well here.

McCarthy co-wrote the screenplay with former "West Wing" staff writer Josh Singer, and it has all the virtues of that TV show's concise verbal summaries of complex issues, sharp but speedy characterizations and interlocking narrative threads. McCarthy also contributes a mobile camera whenever possible and, remarkably, rarely repeats himself in staging scene after scene in the newsroom, libraries and law offices.

As with the best true-life tales, a few seemingly improbable moments stand out: Sacha's doorway interview with a childlike pedophile priest, for one, or Matt's discovery that a "treatment center" for abusive clergy is just blocks from his suburban home. One great throwaway moment is between these two reporters, when Matt tells Sacha he distracts himself from the abuse story by focusing on a novel he's writing. Sacha: "What kind of book?" Matt: "Horror."