Review: The Building Blocks of 'Spotlight'

Friday, 5 February 2016, 12:21 pm
Article: Howard Davis

'Spotlight' is a deeply disturbing film for at least three reasons. Not only does it reveal the systemic institutional corruption of the Boston Archdiocese in particular and the Catholic Church in general. It also shows how the process of investigative journalism requires intensive resources and depends upon passionate levels of professional dedication of the kind that are becoming increasingly scarce in our new media environment. And it demonstrates the truth of the age-old axiom that whenever we point the finger at something or someone else, we're also pointing four fingers back at ourselves.

With a running time of over two hours, the screenplay has some pacing issues and lacks kinetic energy, largely because it's a complex subject driven by character development and dialogue. Fortunately, the cast is uniformly excellent and provides superbly understated performances. Besides stars like Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton, it also employs truly masterful character actors such as Jamey Sheridan, Stanley Tucci, Liv Schreiber, Paul Guilfoyle, Billy Crudup and John Slattery.

To give some idea of their dramatic attention to authentic detail, when Keaton accepted the role, he spent many hours absorbing video and audio tapes of the Spotlight section editor Walter Robinson. Commenting on Robinson's relatively soft Boston accent, Keaton said "he will fall into one when he's around people from his neighborhood or other neighborhoods. But then his r's get hard and he does 'ing' and sometimes he doesn't do 'ing.' So when I saw that I thought, 'Oh, shoot, now how do I determine when he's speaking with a Boston accent and when he's not?' So little things like that were hard. But basically what you want to do is be true to the guy, and I don't mean protect him, I just mean be who they are, not try to make them nicer than they are or anything. He was very cagey about how he gets information. Not in a bad way, in a really cool way, like a bird dog. So I kind of had mannerisms I observed."

When Keaton actually met Robinson for the first time, he did such an accurate impression that Robinson asked, "How did you know everything about me - we just met?" And after seeing the movie, Robinson commented, "My persona has been hijacked. If Michael Keaton robbed a bank, the police would quickly have me in handcuffs. It's like watching yourself in a mirror, yet having no control of the mirror image."

The movie has cinematic antecedents in terms of depicting the easy cynicism of hard-nosed news hounds, press flacks, and PR people that run as far back as 'His Girl Friday', ' The Front Page,' and 'The Sweet Smell of Success.' Director Tom McCarthy has himself cited multiple films about journalists as influences, including 'All The President's Men,' 'Frost/Nixon,' 'Broadcast News,' 'Network,' 'The killing Fields,' 'The Insider,' 'Citizen Kane,' 'Ace in the Hole,' 'JFK,' and 'Good Night, and Good Luck.' He has also described how they built a large set replicating The Boston Globe offices. When the reporters depicted in the movie first visited the set, they gravitated to the desks where they had been sitting during the writing of the 'Spotlight' piece and started re-arranging items to the way they had been at the time. The credits and title cards are set in Miller, the typeface The Globe uses for most headlines and body copy, and the paper was very helpful with set, costume, and production design.

According to an interview in 'The Guardian,' the search for authenticity went as far as using recyced op-shop clothing. Costume director Wendy Chuck said much of her research was geographical. There is a Boston uniform, according to Chuck: blue shirt, khaki trousers, and dark brown shoes available from “discount stores, Gap and second-hand shops”. The costumes in question are mostly old, un-ironed shirts, used leather jackets, and drab trouser suits. “It’s a process to get that look,” Chuck explains. “You want to break stuff in - essentially stonewash the whole wardrobe. With shirts, you need to pick something in a cheerless colour … then pop a bit of cascade in the wash, maybe a little bleach … or you put a tennis ball into the washing machine, which breaks down the fibres and makes them look old.” Then it’s a case of just wearing the same shirt two days running or “leaving them unfolded on the back of a chair so they don’t look crispy new”.

The narrative arc has a similarly 'used' feel to it - overcoming obstacles in an unrelenting quest for truth. It traces the trajectory of how The Globe's team experienced investigative journalists uncovered the horrifying scandal of massive child molestation and repeated cover-ups within the Boston Archdiocese, which eventually shook the entire Catholic Church to its core. The hacks become heroes as they reveal secrets that have remained buried for decades. It's no exaggeration to say that the three men and one woman who worked for the 'Spotlight' section of the newspaper changed the course of history as profoundly as Woodward and Bernstein. Their invaluable work has had global implications that are still being unraveled today.

An especially telling moment occurs when Rachel McAdams warns Neal Huff that she will have to postpone her interviews with the survivors, due to the events 9/11. A TV in the bar is broadcasting a Penn State football game and Joe Paterno appears on screen. The longtime coach was fired after failing to report the on-going sexual abuse of young boys by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in 2012.

Whenever we choose to focus our attention elsewhere and ignore what's happening right under our very noses, we're all complicit in the cover-up.

© Scoop Media

Howard Davis

Scoop Arts Editor

Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.

Contact Howard Davis

• Email - howard@scoop.co.nz