Spotlight

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2016)

I think we have all heard news about the "slips" of many Catholic priests who abused of their position in order to obtain sexual favors from kids and teenagers. However, the film Spotlight has the purpose of portraying the tragic reality of those "slips", as well as the huge dimension of the problem and the unforgivable complicity of the highest religious figures who tried to hide the truth, or at least minimize it until it seemed something infrequent and excusable. In order to achieve that, co-screenwriters Tom McCarthy (who was also the director) and Josh Singer wrote a solid screenplay, which, I must say, feels diffuse and fragmented on the beginning, with the reporters talking fast about people we don't know and events nobody has explained us. During 15 or 20 minutes, the experience was a bit frustrating, as if I had arrived late at the cinema. However, we end up building the puzzle at the same time as the characters; and when we discover the final "image", we receive the same emotional impact as the characters. It was a risky strategy, but the result is very interesting, while trusting in the audience's capacity to think, instead of receiving everything spoon-fed. Besides, Spotlight feels like a love letter to investigative journalism, a discipline which has almost disappeared in this time of "clickbait", instantaneous gratification and "listicles" as a replacement of genuine information. Even with digital help (the events portrayed in this film happened in the early-2000s, so there already were electronic mail, mobile phones and all kinds of digital databases), the reporters have to invest long hours of real work, interviewing people, checking printed registers from the previous century and, specially, creating hypotheses they have to support with evidence. Hollywood has accustomed us to the typical scene in which someone uses a laptop to search in Google, and ready... in 30 seconds, he/she found the necessary information to capture a terrorist/discover the origin of a ghost/deduct the killer's identity, etc. But having to search everything in the real world changes the perspective of the narrative itself, and inspires renewed respect for this archaic discipline in danger of extinction. On the other hand, that means that Spotlight is a slow movie, with a deliberate rhythm which allows us to savor every detail of the story and the performances. Almost everything happens inside the austere offices of the newspaper; there are no chases, police mobilization, or legal trial with surprising verdicts; and even though the characters are well defined, there aren't any artificial conflicts to accentuate their emotions. Fortunately, those tricks aren't necessary when we have the excellent performances from Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup and Brian d'Arcy James. In conclusion, I don't think I would consider Spotlight as a great movie; but it's a very interesting film which definitely deserves to be recommended.