DVD movie review

Spotlight (2015, USA) is eye opening because it illuminates issues in the Catholic Church.

If you have lived in the United States in the last fifteen years you probably would have heard, read or seen stories about the sex abuse scandals there.

Spotlight is the story of a newspaper investigation into the abuse scandal in Boston and is up close in the way a movie can.

Complex and detailed, the movie takes us through a labyrinth of following leads, meetings, interviews, strong personal reactions to what is uncovered, and opposition to the reporting, with one basic thread: get the story before someone shuts them down.

The Boston Globe investigative newspaper team went after the story of systemic cover-up of child abuse cases in the Boston archdiocese of the Catholic Church in America. The investigative reporters—who usually spend a year on a project—stop what they are doing to follow the abuse story, on the direction of their new editor. However, getting the story won’t be easy.

As portrayed in the movie, the Catholic Church is a powerful institute that will stifle attempts to uncover its inner workings by outsiders. The reporter’s have to use their wits and game plan to get around Church bureaucracy.

However, a story emerges of claims, revelations and the facts.

For example, for a priest to be sexually active with an adult would be anathema to quite a few Catholics, and would not be widely known, though victims’ lawyer (played by Stanley Tucci) has information that fifty percent of priests aren’t celibate and that the child abuse issue comes back to the vow of celibacy.

The reporters gather information that victims’ silence comes from the church settling with victims behind closed doors and guilt and shame of abuse victims heavily contributes to them keeping silent.

With a broad brushstroke, the viewer may find their eye on how bad the church is because of two issues: child abuse and the cover up of it. We may see the church differently.

News of abuse stories and cover up is infectious. One of the reporters stops going to church with her grandmother. Another reporter wants the church to pay when the victim’s stories are confirmed.

Spotlight shows the effects of a church compromising its message. On Christmas Eve, one reporter listens to ‘Silent Night’ in the ‘back row’ of a church, probably skeptically.  The abuse sullies the name of God.

People leave. Adults are burnt because as children they were abused. Many victims don’t survive.

Spotlight paints the Catholic Church in the shadows, but the evidence pointing to these abuse cases makes it necessary to do so.

(I wonder if there will be ever a time when we see a movie that sensitively deals with priests with abuse problems and what can be done to help them.)

Journalists are the protagonists and heroes that viewers can easily identify with. They ‘got to do what they got to do’.

Warnings—profanity and content that may disturb

Notes: Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Director: Tom McCarthy, Screenwriters: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer