Oscar Contenders "Spotlight," "Room" Take on "Mockingjay"
By Christopher Lawrence
t isn't quite as foolhardy as asking a teenage girl to lead a rebellion against a brutal police state. But it's close. Both "Spotlight" and "Room" deal with the trauma of sexual abuse. As two of the year's best films, they're expected to be Oscar contenders. And they both face an uphill battle at the box office while most moviegoers will be occupied with "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2." It's a tough task, but if any small films can gain traction against Katniss Everdeen, it would be these. "Spotlight" follows the Boston Globe's investigation that exposed the Catholic Church's protection of pedophile priests. And, much like the explosive stories that followed, there's very little flashy about it. Upon his arrival from Miami, new Globe editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) tasks the paper's Spotlight team — editor Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton) and reporters Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James) — with following up on a column about a local priest charged with abusing young parishioners. A year later, the Globe exposed more than 70 additional Boston priests as well as the systemic corruption that allowed them to continue. Some of the allegations are horrifying. The victims mostly came from broken homes in bad neighborhoods. The priests didn't necessarily prefer boys, they just knew that, given the shame and confusion, boys would be less likely to report them. One of the now adult victims recalls being molested as a 12-year-old when a priest swooped in while he was grieving after his father's suicide. It's a story few people in heavily Catholic Boston wanted told and even fewer wanted to hear. Fifty-three percent of the Globe's subscribers were Catholic. All four members of the Spotlight team were raised Catholic. And the Church is so prominent, its buildings literally loom over its victims. But the sensational story is told responsibly. Aside from a roughly 30-second outburst from Ruffalo's Rezendes, there's very little emotion in "Spotlight." It's just a stunning look at professionals doing a job most people would run from and doing it very well. Perhaps the most powerful bit of "Spotlight" comes at the end with a list, nearly as long as the special effects credits in a typical Hollywood blockbuster, of the 206 cities where the Church faced major abuse cases after the Globe's investigation. Fictional but no less haunting is "Room," the story of a young woman (Brie Larson, "Trainwreck"), who's been kept by her abductor (Sean Bridgers) for the past seven years in a 10-foot by 10-foot shed, and Jack (Jacob Tremblay), her 5-year-old son who's never seen the outside world. For a movie this dark, though, it's filled with a heartbreaking amount of innocence. Jack opens the movie, on his fifth birthday, going around Room and welcoming every object in sight: "Good morning sink. Good morning toilet." And Ma makes the best of the situation for Jack, having him "run track" back and forth in the small space and even finding a way to make him a birthday cake. But when she finally can't take it any more, Ma begins the daunting process of explaining that there really is a world outside Room, then explaining the difference between the real world and what Jack sees on TV. Eventually, she begins planning for their escape. Without ruining anything, "Room" isn't nearly the downer it sounds like. The studio is even promoting the following spoiler (if you want to remain in the dark, skip to the next paragraph): Jack and Ma make it out, then have to adjust to life outside Room. The resulting film is twisted and amazing, anchored by tremendous performances from Larson and especially 8-year-old Tremblay. Much like "Spotlight," the events it depicts are horrible. Yet neither is anywhere near as bleak as forcing starving teenagers to fight to the death. Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com
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