UNITED STATES
Portland Phoenix
Francis Flisiuk
Spotlight opened in theaters this month, with a gripping realistic story that showed audiences snippets of a process we don’t usually see: what it takes to uncover, research and write a groundbreaking piece of investigative journalism.
The film tells the true story of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, who investigated allegations in 2001 that the Roman Catholic Church was involved in covering up the cases of dozens of pedophile priests over the decades. The team of six (played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery, Michael Keaton and Billy Crudup) dug up proof by demanding public records, pestering abuse lawyers, and interviewing victims, that the Catholic Church and the Boston Archdiocese deliberately knew that over 200 priests were molesting children for years.
Despite the lurid nature of the story, the film spares viewers from flashbacks that detail the awful moments when children as young as four were fondled or abused by men that they thought they could trust the most. We get a sense of the horrors the victims went through, when they open up and reveal details after Sacha Pfeiffer (played by McAdams) insists that simply saying “I was molested,” isn’t enough. Pfeiffer’s pained expression and soft-spoken tone when she insisted that the language used was important to the story, highlighted that although she cared about details, she also cared about respecting the individuals and their dignity. The reporters in Spotlight didn’t sensationalize the abuses, or cause courtroom spectacles, they simply did their job of finding the truth, diligently.
A main focus of the movie is on the craft, process and importance of investigative journalism. Party due to the efforts of unsung players like those Globe journalists (real names: Sacha Pfeiffer, Michael Rezendes, Walter “Robby” Robinson, Marty Baron, Ben Bradlee and Matt Carroll) those monster priests were prosecuted and kept away from children. The Boston Globe’s investigation and subsequent publishing of over 600 articles also accomplished something even more valuable: It taught the world to think critically of the Catholic Church and other organizations that we tend to put blind faith in just because they’ve been established members of authority for centuries. Like the real-life stories that inspired the film, Spotlight does a good job of re-kindling these troubling but valuable thoughts. Spotlight re-illustrated the notion that although the Catholic Church claims to do the work of God with one hand, sometimes it sweeps atrocities under the rug with the other. The journalists who weren’t afraid to relentlessly ask the uncomfortable questions and defy an institution that’s still considered untouchable, were the only ones to drag the harsh nasty truth into the light.
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