UNITED STATES
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Dominic Preziosi
November 19, 2015
The movie Spotlight depicts how the Boston Globe in 2002 broke the story that the Boston archdiocese was covering up the abuse of children by scores of priests. Coincidently, one of the abusers portrayed in the film, former priest Ronald Paquin, was just last month released from state custody after serving a criminal sentence for repeatedly raping an altar boy over a three-year-period beginning when the victim was twelve. (Paquin also admitted to molesting fourteen other boys.) Medical specialists determined Paquin no longer met the legal criteria for “sexual dangerousness,” and so the district attorney’s office had to withdraw its bid to keep him in custody.
“The church thinks in centuries,” one character remarks in Spotlight, and in watching it I thought of all the people—if you aren’t one you probably know one—who’ve decided to take the very long view themselves. Mark Ruffalo plays Globe reporter Michael Rezendes; in one scene, after learning of the archdiocese’s systematic cover-up, he says he used to like going to Mass as a child, and that he’d always expected to go back someday. “But now…” he says, leaving the obvious unspoken: Never.
Ruffalo’s is the best performance in a movie that for better and worse plays as a newsroom procedural. Director Tom McCarthy (who also did the screenplay) keeps things compelling and taut. Churches impose themselves into scenes of reporters seeking out victims, or loom in the background. Journalists attest to the movie’s accurate depiction of the trade, the sartorial haplessness of its practitioners, the office “decor.” Even Vatican Radio gives it a thumbs-up.
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