Spotlight

In 2015 when the film Spotlight hit theaters the subject of sexual assault in the Catholic Church was already so much in the news that it had become a running joke, memes, and the subject of countless stand-up comedy acts. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman co-starred in an Academy Award nominated film, Doubt, in which a priest is accused by a nun of inappropriately touching an alter boy. That film in turn was based on a 2004 stage play. The subject was in the public conscious for well over a decade. The film Spotlight is fictional but it is loosely based on a series of stories by the Spotlight team that earned The Boston Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. It depicts a cover-up so massive it was almost unbelievable, even to the reporters investigating it, all of whom come from Catholic backgrounds. 

Watching it back in 2015 it felt like more of what we had already seen countless times before in the news over the last decade. Now that there is more time separating the events with the current emotional climate it becomes even more clear just how bad this cover-up was and it makes reading the closing interstitial titles before the end credits even more maddening. At one point the film is careful to point out that the Catholic Church is an institution like any other, ran by imperfect men; blame the people, not the institution, it posits. It also compares the people turning a blind eye to the situation to that of the German people during the rise of the Third Reich. It’s looking at the situation from both sides while never really giving us someone in the actual ranks of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy that is sympathetic and uninvolved. The closest we get is a former priest working to rehabilitate other priests. In that way it is definitely a film with an agenda and there are surely going to be people out there that will take objection to that representation. 

The story opens with a brief prelude in 1976 where two policemen are discussing the arrest of Father John Geoghan for child molestation. It doesn’t take long though before the assistant district attorney intervenes, informing the officers to hide the information from the press, burying the story and releasing the Priest. Flash forward twenty-five years and Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), the new managing editor of the Boston Globe, meets with Walter “Robby” Robinson, the editor of the newspaper’s “Spotlight” investigative team. Baron has read a Globe article about a lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), charging that Cardinal Bernard Law (Len Cariou), the Archbishop of Boston, knew about Geoghan’s sexual abuse of children and covered it up. Baron wants the Spotlight team to set aside their current investigation and shift their focus to this story, focusing on the institution that allowed this to happen rather than just one priest and the individual victims. Robby agrees and informs his team of the new investigation. This team includes: Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James). Their supervisor is Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) who is unhappy with the direction but doesn’t interfere with it. 

The initial thought is that they are dealing with a single priest, John Geoghan, who has been relocated multiple times over the years, but it soon becomes apparent that there is a pattern of sexual abuse by other priests in Massachusetts and a long running cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. The investigation widens to thirteen priests thanks to information provided by Phil Saviano (Neal Huff) who heads the victims’ rights group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Richard Sipe (Richard Jenkins), a former priest who worked to rehabilitate sexually abusive priests, informs them that the number is actually much higher, approximately 6% of all the priests in the Boston area. This amounts to about 90 priests in all. Through their research the team comes up with the names of 87 priests as well as victims to back up those suspicions. 

This is an excellent tell-all docudrama that brings to light a subject that was already in the public eye thanks to the real life investigative work done by the Spotlight team in Boston. The film only focuses on the investigation leading up to the first report printed but there were many more that followed as more information became known. This is a hot-button topic, not just in the ranks of the Catholic church but in every other aspect of life where people preyed on others. In a way this was the beginnings of what would become the #metoo movement that rocked Hollywood to the core and took down such powerhouses as Bill Cosby and the Weinsteins. As more and more stories of sexual abuse and assault become public more people who had stood silent for years, sometimes even decades, were emboldened to speak up and share their stories, too. Sexual predators in all walks of life were suddenly finding themselves targeted for investigations and getting punished for years of bad behavior and those that had been preyed upon were finally given a forum to speak up and see justice served. The worst part of all of this is that it took so long to get to this point and that it took even longer to get to the point where people could step forward and put a stop to it. 

There are moments in this movie that are absolutely sobering. Michael Rezendes is able to speak with one of the victims and hear his story. In the course of this interview it is explained to him how this type of thing happens and the mindset of the individual who is targeted. A trust is built between the instigator and the victim that includes the feeling that the priest involved is representing God making any attention a welcomed one, until it goes too far. It not only becomes a betrayal, but one that is preceived as so shameful that those targeted feel they cannot speak up about it. People like Phil Saviano are willing to speak up and help the investigation but are rightfully upset because when they reached out with evidence in the past that information went ignored and nothing got done. This accusation hits home for Robby who realizes he was sent a list of 20 sexually abusive priests nearly ten years ago and never followed up on it. 

When the articles published by the Spotlight team in the Boston Globe began to be published they included a web link to the damning documents uncovered that exposed Cardinal Law for the cover-ups as well as a phone number for victims to come forward with their stories. The morning after that first story was published the phones were going off the hook with incoming calls from people eager to share their own experiences and to offload a secret trauma that had been hidden for so many years. It upended the diocese in Boston and eventually led to Cardinal Law’s decision to step down from his position in the city. He was soon relocated to Rome where he was promoted and remained in good standing with the church until he retired in 2011.

The cast and crew were tackling a very serious topic and one that people by 2015 were already getting tired of hearing about in the media. The subject was everywhere and had become a bit of a punchline when referring to the Catholic church. Spotlight made us all remember again that sexual abuse is not a punchline and that real people were destroyed because of it. On more than one occasion the film reminds us that not everyone was able to put it behind them and live relatively normal lives in the aftermath of the abuse. Some became drug addicts, others ended their lives. It also brought to our attention that sometimes otherwise good people had done nothing and allowed these things to continue too long, turning a blind eye to what was, in retrospect, so obvious. Robby Robinson, the editor of the Spotlight team and the one driving his investigators in the pursuit of truth, knows that he is complicit by doing nothing when he was given a list of names eight years prior. He has to live with the knowledge that that is eight years of continued abuse that could have been prevented had he been more proactive. He’s not a bad man, but he stood by. 

This is a powerful film with a lot of eye-opening information and harrowing details. Watching it will make you angry and that is what it is supposed to do. Angry people take action. That is what the articles in the Globe accomplished when they were first published in early 2002 bringing to life the very real atrocities occurring in their community, including in the very neighborhood of one of the investigators. It’s interesting following the leads alongside the ensemble cast as they figure out just how big this epidemic actually is. It’s also understandable seeing just how frustrating some of the affected people are when they had reached out in the past only to get ignored. It’s hard to imagine a time when people in general were afraid to speak up about these things and yet that wasn’t all that long ago. Many people still are afraid to speak up. High profile cases like the one depicted here, as well as the numerous accusations and prosecutions that came out of Hollywood, have changed that mindset and, hopefully, made those environments a little more safe from the threats of sexual abuse. 

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: Blye Pagon Faust, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Michael Sugar (won)

Best Director: Tom McCarthy

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo

Best Supporting Actress: Rachel McAdams

Best Original Screenplay: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (won)

Best Film Editing: Tom McArdle

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Release Date: November 6, 2015

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery and Stanley Tucci

Directed By: Tom McCarthy