MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR
[with audio]
Thu, Nov 05, 2015
by Roy J. Harris Jr.
“Spotlight,” the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation into a church cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, opens in limited release nationwide tomorrow, including in Boston. It may well be, as a headline in Variety declared, that it’s “the film that will make journalism look good again.” That would certainly be a bonus for the nation’s beleaguered news business.
Still, questions remain about whether even such a taut, well-acted, realistic drama about a newspaper exposé from 2002 will draw movie-goers who today are far more likely to tap their news from a cellphone than to read it on the printed page of “Spotlight’s” world. The movie’s most unbelievable element, in fact, may also be its simplest truth: that then-Globe editor Martin Baron, played by Liev Schreiber, sparked such a profoundly powerful reporting effort on his very first day at the Globe, after being hired away from the Miami Herald.
Likely to give it additional appeal, though, is “Spotlight’s” broader, less-heralded angle: a warning about the dangers of uncritically deferring to authority. As Josh Singer, who co-wrote the screenplay with the movie’s director, Tom McCarthy, told me, “The theme of the film is really deference. It’s what makes this story universal.” Indeed, “It’s the same story as with Penn State and with Bill Cosby,” he added, pointing to the difficulties many people have had believing the sexual abuse accusations in those cases.
“Spotlight” is framed to highlight the Globe staff’s own shocking epiphany, as reporters overcame a deferential mindset when they began to penetrate the defenses thrown up by the entrenched Catholic hierarchy. “It’s about not wanting to stick one’s neck out to stop a problem,” Singer said, especially when that problem involves what are generally seen as “good institutions.” He asked, “Who really wants to bring them down?”
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