The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Spotlight: News Leads us Not Into Temptation
By Alex Carrigan
@carriganak QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.
As if things weren't cold enough around my home, Spotlight managed to make me feel a sudden chill. The film depicts the Spotlight team at The Boston Globe. The team is investigating widespread sexual abuse cases in the Boston Catholic diocese. What they realize is that the initial numbers are greater than they first realized, and the film follows the team (Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Brian d'Arcy James) as they try to get the story published.
As if things weren't cold enough around my home, Spotlight managed to make me feel a sudden chill. The film depicts the Spotlight team at The Boston Globe. The team is investigating widespread sexual abuse cases in the Boston Catholic diocese. What they realize is that the initial numbers are greater than they first realized, and the film follows the team (Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Brian d'Arcy James) as they try to get the story published. This was a film I found progressively more sick and dark as it progressed. As someone who was raised Catholic, this was something that made me think a lot about my upbringing. While nothing like the cases of the film occurred in my church, I am reminded of how the church fostered the mindset of the children there, especially in Sunday School. They did want you to think in a certain way, and used a lot of the teachings to try and influence even the most random thought processes. I remember being told to not see The Golden Compass because it was anti-Catholic and having Desperate Housewives brought up as an example of how awful cheating is and how awful it is that the media would depict it. That's not to say everything was hogwash, but what Spotlight highlights is that in institutions like the church, it's easy for charisma and identity to be exploited and used to deceive. The film has the reporters interview many abuse victims, and many of their stories follow the same common threads. They all needed help, were promised a confidant, but had their trust betrayed. They trusted the priests of Boston's extremely strong Catholic diocese, and they only suffered for it. What the film shows is even more terrifying is that this is not a small case. The film ends with a list of cities where sexual abuse cases like the one in the film were shown, and the list shows dozens of cities all over the world. Spotlight was a film very much like All the President's Men. It really makes you want to be a journalist. As someone who majored in journalism, only to fall out of it towards the end of college, it really ignited a passion to be a reporter. I know most journalists don't do the kind of work the Spotlight team does, but it shows how important and powerful truth is. There's a certain power to knowing a truth and being able to spread it. This comes with the fear about what it would mean when the truth became extremely known. Whether it could make things better or not could drive some to do whatever they could to hide it, which only resulted in others trying to bring it to light. Spotlight isn't the most intense or unique journalism film there is, but it's an extremely well made film. I generally feel movies about people who work in offices run the risk of turning dull quickly or failing to make anyone or anything interesting to watch. While we learn little about the cast, we can see the strengths they possess and their determination to work together to break this story. No one falters in his or her resolve, no one tries to dissuade the others. These people all want to see this story come to light and they're willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that. The film manages to keep going the entire time, and it never feels like it gets dull. There's always movement on screen, and there's never too much time spent in one scene. Pretty much every scene helps move the investigation along, so it feels like there's a lot being done, but you barely notice the two hour running time. It felt somewhat refreshing considering I've been watching a lot of two and a half hour films this week, so I didn't feel like this was dragging. As for where Spotlight places on my ranking: sorry, Mad Max: Fury Road. I can say for sure you're not the best movie of this group anymore. It'll still probably be my favorite one, but I think Spotlight has more claim to the Oscar this time. For me, Spotlight had enough rising tension to keep interest the whole way through, and had enough care put into it to make it all technically sound. I'm not sure if the direction was the best, so I don't think it will win that award for director Tom McCarthy. I do think Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams were really good, so I could be happy if either won the Supporting Actor/Actress award. They're not the favorites to win at this point, but both roles were really solid. I think Ruffalo has the better chance of winning, though. As for Best Picture, I think Spotlight would be a fitting winner. It's early to tell since I've only seen half of the films so far, but I found this to be a really decent and solid film that could work as the Best Picture. Generally, the winner of Best Picture is a film that should and could be revisited years from now by new audiences. This hasn't worked for every film (an article I saw on my Facebook feed reminded me just how silly Crash was as a Best Picture choice), but Spotlight could work. It's a technically precise film with strong acting, a good screenplay, and a continuous story that never loses its drive and remains fascinating. It'd also work as a good period piece and a good example of how journalism was done in the early new millennium. I could see it come up in journalism classes, much like All the President's Men or Shattered Glass, and I think it's an important story to keep around as an example of both excellent journalism and excellent filmmaking. Current Ranking 1st: Spotlight 2nd: Mad Max: Fury Road 3rd: The Revenant 4th: The Martian Tomorrow: I watch Brooklyn while buried beneath snow. I'll also probably be laughing at Brooklyn accents and looking for a reason to shout "BROOKLYN RAGE!"
#Real #FilmReview #Spotlight #MarkRuffalo #RachelMcAdams #Oscars #AcademyAwards #Oscars
Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
CommentsComments are closed.
|
|