WHY SPOTLIGHT DESERVES TO WIN AN OSCAR

By Helen O Hara
GQ
January 25, 2016

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/spotlight-film-review

Despite being the last of this year's big Oscar contenders to hit general release in the UK, Spotlight is still a front runner. On paper, it could hardly be less appetising. The trailers haven't quite managed to communicate any real tension, and the plot involves paedophile priests, Boston city politics and a team of defiantly unglamorous people talking in rooms. Worse, they're trying to uncover a story you probably feel you already know. But don't be fooled: this is going to have you on tenterhooks throughout.

Set in 2001, incoming Mary Baron (Liev Schreiber) has just taken office at the Boston Globe, and assigns the paper's long-form investigation team, Spotlight, the job of looking into allegations made by a victim's lawyer that the Catholic Church has known about abuser priests for decades and covered the scandal up. The team is sceptical, wary of taking on the Church in a thoroughly catholic town, but led by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) they start to investigate anyway, and uncover a trail that suggests problems far greater than anyone imagined.

It's another story rooted in Boston's peculiar parochial psyche, but unlike all those crime dramas - most recently the scattershot Black Mass - this feels like a recognisable city. Its incidental characters are not gangsters or grotesques but ordinary people who, for the most part, thought they were doing the right thing when they trusted a priest, or turned a blind eye. That's the film's real power: the Spotlight team strips away the comfortable lies that everyone tells themselves, including their own.

Director Tom McCarthy works from an almost flawless script, but his real weapon is a cast who dig in and play down to form a true ensemble with almost no grandstanding moments. Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci and even those in smaller roles like Billy Crudup don't try to steal focus from one another; they just lift the story. It's not going to be for everyone - the closest thing to an action beat involves the race to photocopy something before closing time - but if you're ok with talky dramas, they don't get much better.

This has been compared to All The President's Men, with justification. The team's efforts arguably had an even bigger effect, reverberating worldwide and sparking literally hundreds of follow-up inquiries. But however appalling the subject matter - and the film never flinches from telling the survivors' stories - there's hope here, in the account of hugely gifted people working hard towards an immensely worthwhile goal. It's like The Martian, but with the soul of Matt Damon's hometown at stake.