Maybe not the best, but undeniably the most important movie of 2015

Rating: 9/10 (28 February 2016)

There are two genres of modern-day cinema that are strictly American: the courthouse drama and the journalism one. Why? Because what they work with are the true powers #3 and #4 in America, absolutely on par with the legislative and executive ones. I realize that democracy and separation of powers is not owned or copyrighted by the United States, but only there we seem to have a system where judges can - and sometimes successfully do - defy presidents and the press can break careers of the government officials of a highest rank. I don't think i love America all too much, but these are the things that America can - and should - be respected all around the globe. Still, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and to make things right it's not enough to simply be a power - you have to actually use it sometimes to enforce that the good remains good and the evil is eradicated.
Spotlight is a story of one case of such struggle. And this time it's not just Good vs Evil, it's about the evil that comes from the roots of the good itself. Because the way the film shows it, the Catholic Church is an alias for God himself for a great many people in America, and the problem of child molestation by Catholic priests is more than just a rare case of "a few bad apples", it's a widespread phenomenon, a tendency, a real system.
Of course, a journalism drama movie is mostly defined by the topic it covers, so it could be tempting to put the equals sign between the quality of a movie and the importance of the topic. However, it would be an understatement. A good movie is more than just a summary of the story, it's a drama (or even a tragedy) of simple people involved in it. And through their eyes we get to see what could be a dry text in an encyclopedia book as something living, vivid and emotionally disturbing. Something that we take personal.
And that's where Spotlight really shines. What we are shown is not just the facts - which, i'm sure, most of us have known (at least to some extent) for a long time - but the way those facts hit the real people living in the same world the story belongs to. Facts that hit people like a hammer hits things: some of them break, some get bent and crooked and some remain straight and pierce the reality around them to make a difference. The team of investigative journalists from the Spotlight section of The Boston Globe is a pack of those straight things: no matter what pressure is put on them by the story they uncover, no matter how personal it ends up to be, their top priority is to serve the public good.
What makes the story of Spotlight stand out is that the public is not completely aware of what is good for it. The Catholic Church is not an enemy people wanna fight, it's something that gives you faith, a ground to stand upon when the world around is shaking, but then starts corrupting all the good things it's done, leaving people confused, emptied and destroyed.
It's one thing to just tell about those horrible devastating things. It's a completely different one to make you feel something about it. And to give you more than a one-dimensional sense of shame or anger or disappointment, but instead to fill you with a stinging cocktail of them all, is a task only a master can accomplish. And i believe that the team that made Spotlight had such masters in it.
I believe that it was the characters and their portrayal by actors that made a difference. They are just a team of journalists and a couple lawyers doing their job. But at the same time it's not just a job for them. It's a personal stance. And each of them has different feelings because of it. Mark Ruffalo's character is energetic and angry, a true Hulk of a reporter (maybe even more believable as one than in Avengers or anywhere else), Rachel McAdams' characters brings soothing compassion only her face and voice are capable to convey. Stanley Tucci gives us an outsider with limited power who still tries to do the right thing. And Michael Keaton and Liev Schreiber show us the people who finally try to cha(lle)nge something that was neglected for way too long and go all-in while doing it. One by one, these characters don't seem like much special, but united by one thirst for justice, they become a force capable of making a major change.
I can't say that Spotlight breaks the confines of its genre. Even with Michael Keaton in it, it's no Birdman, and it can't simply fly away from all the rules set for it. Still, it's a movie that tries its best not to be a cliché fest, and for a story that's bound by the facts it's based on, it has a surprising amount of freedom in it. So if you even remotely enjoy movies where people talk about complex things more than they yell or throw punches, give this one a try.