Spotlight

SPOTLIGHT

Director : Tom McCarthy
Year : 2016
Genre : Drama
Rating : ****

In his earth-shattering HBO funded documentary 'Mea Maxima Culpa : Silence In The House Of God', director Alex Gibney uncovered the horrifying facts behind the systematic sexual abuse of deaf children by dozens of Catholic priests throughout the 1970's. Frank, honest, and unflinchingly direct, Gibney's hard-hitting film delved deep into the inner workings of the church itself to discover why, and more importantly how these barbaric actions went unnoticed for so many years.

Now Tom McCarthy's equally shocking 'Spotlight', the final Best Picture nominee to be released here in the UK, tells the abuse scandal from the points of view of those who fought to expose the truth. Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci and Liev Schreiber, 'Spotlight' tells the astonishing true story of how, in 2001, a small group reporters from the Boston Globe daringly took on the Catholic Church and uncovered a multi-stranded web of lies, corruption and deceit stretching across not only the town of Boston but the entirety of the world.

Set amongst the bustling offices and crowded corridors of the aforementioned publication, 'Spotlight' thematically draws instant comparison with 'All The Presidents Men', Alan J. Pakula's brilliant 1976 Oscar winning drama about the plucky journalists who uncovered the tumultuous Watergate scandal in the early 1970's. But thematic similarities aside, 'Spotlight' tells its story in a much more subdued and cinematically unobtrusive way than it's flashy and highly influential counterpart.

Rather than allowing directorial flair to take centre stage, McCarthy allows the shocking subject matter to remain the films sole focus - Masonobu Takayanagi's purposefully unobtrusive camera work betraying a sense of importance and intense reverence for the story being told. The lean and extremely well judged script by McCarthy and Josh Singer consistently carries an air of urgency and growing horror with each ghastly revelation feeling like an overwhelming punch in the gut while Howard Shore's minimalistic underscoring helps to cement the movies poignancy and considerable emotional heft.

But while the visual aesthetics may remain somewhat muted, the performances from the cast are consistently gripping and at times, unsettlingly authoritative. Having garnered critical acclaim with his Academy Award nominated turn in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Oscar darling 'Birdman : Or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance', Michael Keaton yet again delivers a brittle yet brilliant performance as Walter Robinson, the Boston Globe veteran who leads the entire investigation and whose steely resolve is slowly eroded as the horrifying facts surrounding the scandal begin to spill onto his desk.

There is also a great turn from the now Oscar nominated Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, a fellow Globe reporter whose unexpected encounter with a suspected priest provides 'Spotlight' with it's most infuriating set piece. However amongst the wealth of great performances, it is the similarly Academy Award nominated Mark Ruffalo starring as the investigator Mike Rezendes who turns out to be the true revelation here, masterfully portraying a man battling between dispassionate empathy and deeply suppressed rage with astonishing conviction and technique. 

As is to be expected with any movie of this sort, 'Spotlight' has generated it's fair share of controversy - with some criticising its depiction of the Church and the way it dealt with the sexual abuse cases while others have actively sued the filmmakers for its portrayal of several key characters. However, despite whatever factual or ethical flaws it may or may not possess, 'Spotlight' is still a powerful, moving, uncompromising and frequently distressing watch that continually manages to shock, upset and anger in equal measure - a final rollcall of affected cities proving to be a most dreadful epilogue.