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‘spotlight’ Gets a Vatican Audience

By Cara Buckley
New York Times
February 5, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/movies/spotlight-gets-a-vatican-audience.html

From left, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d’Arcy James, Michael Keaton and John Slattery in a scene from “Spotlight.”

“Spotlight,” considered an Oscar front-runner, follows The Boston Globe expose of the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. And on Thursday the film was finally shown to figures at the heart of the story: it was privately screened for a Vatican commission entrusted with investigating that abuse.

The screening, described in The Los Angeles Times as “extraordinary,” preceded a three-day meeting of the commission. That panel was created by Pope Francis, but he was reportedly not at the showing.

Last year, after the film played at the Venice Film Festival, Deadline.com quoted Mark Ruffalo, who plays one of the Boston Globe journalists, as saying that he and the rest of the “Spotlight” team were “hoping that the pope and the Vatican use this very, very sober and judicious story to begin to heal the wounds that the church also received.”

Vatican Radio commented on the film at the time, calling it “honest” and “compelling,” and praising the director, Tom McCarthy, for avoiding scandal-mongering. The outlet also noted that the church had nothing to fear from the film.

The development might nudge “Spotlight” ahead in this year’s tight Oscar race. It certainly underscores the film’s heft beyond a mere awards race, and naming it best picture might make the beleaguered Academy look good. The only thing that could trump this turn would be Wall Street indictments prompted by “The Big Short,” and we all know how likely that is.

 

 

 

 

 




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