"They'll print anything these days"

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2016)

The classic investigative journalism story isn't an easy sell. By necessity, they're talky, dense as molasses, and too subdued to make for any splashy awards-bait performances - even your average courtroom drama allows for some passionate Oscar-clip shoutiness. And yet, there are cases where the story itself is the headliner, too important to exploit or trivialize for any gains other than its own integrity. Naturally, it's a message that Tom McCarthy's Spotlight takes to heart, and the film's performance in the awards circuit shows that - more often than not - trimmings or not, hard to watch or not, people can handle the truth.
This is all not to say that Spotlight is a dull, thanklessly dour watch. Of course, the horrifically grim subject matter colours the timbre of the story, and McCarthy treads carefully in neither drifting into tacky, unwarranted tangential church-bashing or fetishizing the suffering of the victims (no tasteless, feverish rape flashbacks here, a- la The Lovely Bones, thank goodness). Instead, he is wise enough to take a page out of his reporter protagonists' notebooks, and stick to the immediate, pressing facts. The result is a lean, taut potboiler, which clips along at a brisk pace without a lick of fat on it. Tangents? Expansive character backstories? Cinematic flourishes, or passionate monologuing? All ruthlessly trimmed with the same dismissive grunt of "adjectives" Liev Schreiber's editor mutters while reviewing the final story. It's a bold and entirely appropriate tactic to functionally ride along with the Boston Globe Spotlight team step by painstaking step of the investigation, keeping even the most mundane activities pulsing with urgency (never before have interludes of archival library research been so gripping). Crucially, McCarthy understands that his piece, like the Spotlight team's, is an educational exposé first and foremost, and the script is immaculately laid out and crisply comprehensible, spelling out the facts, fears, and controversies of the case as indisputable rhetorical whammy. Comparisons to All the President's Men are inevitable, and far from unwarranted.
What is a shame, upon reflection, are the occasional downsides to being confined by McCarthy's 'we know what they know' mantra. Spotlight consciously avoids the bloat of cinematic diatribes like Oliver Stone's JFK by ruthlessly paring down, but the cutting room trimmings are fascinating and rich enough cobble together an entire other film out of. The psychological dimension of the social epidemic of pedophiliac priests is hit the hardest. Root causes are alluded to through phone interviews with a 'Deep Throat' style clergy psychologist, but ultimately dropped, just as our glimpses of survivor stories are included only insofar as they provide quantifiable testimonies for the feature. Particularly uncanny is McAdams' reporter unexpectedly ending up face-to-face with an abusive priest, who nonchalantly admits his misdemeanours, and begins to explain his paradoxical rational before he is shooed offscreen, his plot thread never to be rekindled. McCarthy's firm artistic mandate validates these exclusions by concentrating on starting, rather than completing, a conversation on such crucial social issues, but clipping exhibitions of trauma for more clinical evidence occasionally threatens to sideline the human resonance of the story. It's telling that Spotlight's high point is when Stanley Tucci's bulldog of a human rights lawyer actually, for the first time in the film, interacts with children, his energy radically transforming from grim to jubilant and charismatic. It's a beautifully tragic moment, and is crucial in reinforcing the hard realities of why the story is so abominable in the first place.
The ensemble cast work as an impressively cohesive, subdued unit. All are utterly spectacular, with nary a wobbly or excessively showboating link among them. Of course, each bring their own flavour - the scientifically impossible-to-dislike Mark Ruffalo's twitchy peppiness turned passionate dogmatism contributes the affable emotional heart, the endlessly nuanced Michael Keaton's contemplatively stoic editor brings the calm centre, while Rachel McAdams' persistently meticulous fact-checker inwardly aches without a single crack forming. Impressively, no named characters outside of the clergy are superficially coloured as 'bad' - Schreiber - magnetic as always - propels the plot through quiet, resolute persistence as John Slattery cathartically fusses and curses around him, while the perennially wonderful Tucci sneakily, grumpily toils in the background and threatens to walk away with the picture. Even Billy Crudup's oily lawyer furtively admits surprising, sympathetic depth. You know you're in comparatively objective territory when
Spotlight is vital viewing not only for its thorough coverage of its subject matter, but for how respectfully it avoids emotionally fetishizing or obfuscating the integrity of its story. If the only major complaint pertains to the questions McCarthy leaves unanswered, the film should be considered equally commendable for lighting the fire under viewers to undertake their own side investigations appropriately, and thereby preventing the still distressingly common abuse in the church from again drifting into uncomfortable, shameful silence. If nothing else, in an era where cinema and news media alike constantly run the threat of being swamped by sensationalism, the triumphant revitalization of such meticulously gripping, no-nonsense storytelling, let alone such an enjoyably old-fashioned-y newspaper drama, should be championed and cherished. Never before has a room full of haggard people frenziedly answering their phones served as such a triumphant parable to dogged persistence, or quality, meticulous reporting.
-9/10