Spotlight

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Spotlight (2015) won the Best Picture Oscar for its story based on actual events involving widespread child abuse by Boston Catholic priests and the cover-up perpetrated by the Catholic Church. It builds tension and outrage as the revelation of the horrors become real for the reporters, and thus also the audience.

The film begins in Boston in 1976 at a police precinct. The police and the District Attorney’s office are trying to keep secret the child molesting incident by a priest of small children. They are keeping the press away. One of the cops says about an arraignment, “What arraignment?” Obviously, there will be none. A representative makes affirmations to the victim’s family about all the good that the Catholic Church does and that the offending priest will be transferred, as if that is supposed to lessen the effect of the abuse. The film then shows the conspiracy to cover up the atrocity.

We jump to 2001, which shows the length of time that the crimes have endured. Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) heads up the Bostone Globe’s Spotlight division which does in-depth investigative reporting. He tells the new editor of the newspaper, a somber Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) that it takes several months to find a story the four-member team will work on and publish, which points to the thoroughness of the work. (Schreiber’s Marty is a quiet, deliberative speaker and is described sarcastically as “a barrel of laughs).

The fact that many reporters are from Boston and some are Catholic makes the following revelations even more upsetting. They report to Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery), who has the investigative gene since his father was Ben Bradlee who was the executive editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. Unfortunately, the newspaper’s circulation is down and there may be more cuts, already showing the impact of online news.

 Marty wants to explore why there hasn’t been an attempt to get sealed documents that show priest John Geoghan molested eighty children and Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) did nothing about it.

Spotlight reporter Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo, in a Supporting Oscar nominated performance) is a passionate and sometimes annoying character as he constantly questions everyone, even fellow reporters, about what’s going on. He says he runs to blow off steam, but Robby points out that he “runs to work,” so even his leisure time meshes with his job. He is interested in furthering the investigation. However, they all know there is going to be considerable blowback, including from the wide Catholic subscribership.

Mike meets the loud lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) who is not a diplomatic guy. He is also paranoid, rightfully so. The Church has tried to get him disbarred. He’s concerned about Mike wearing a wire and doesn’t even want him to take notes.

Robby and journalist Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) meet with attorney Eric McLeish (Billy Crudup). Eric reveals how difficult it is to prosecute the priest. It’s not a class action suit, which makes any adverse action a nightmare to handle given how each case is handled separately. There is a time limit of three years on bringing charges, and most victims don’t want to admit what happened until long after, since they were from tough neighborhoods and Catholic. Also, there is a cap of only $20,000 in a child molestation case which creates a lack of motivation to engage.

The Spotlight team digs and finds stories about abusive priests who were accused and being moved around by the Church. There is also the existence of a survivors’ organization. However, the newspaper must get solid evidence given the sensitivity of the issue, so they are resistant to move without solid evidence. The Church’s advocates stress the importance of faith, but here it is used to evade responsibility, to believe in something no matter the negatives.

As a tradition, Marty, a new editor, meets Cardinal Law (an ironic name given the situation). More irony in that the cardinal was once an editor. He gives Marty a copy of a book detailing Catholic catechism, as if to indoctrinate him?

The reporters meet with Phil Saviano (Neal Huff), who runs the survivor group, SNAP. He says, “when you’re a poor kid from a poor family, religion means a lot. And when a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal.” Phil is trying to get these lapsed Catholic reporters (and also the audience) to empathize with the victims and understand the context of the situation. He says, “It’s like God asking for help,” when the priest wants favors. When the priest pushes for sexual favors, “how do you say ‘no’ to God?” Phil says. He says it isn’t just physical rape, it’s also “spiritual” violation. The priest here, “robs you of your faith.” Victims will turn to alcohol, drugs, commit suicide, and some are survivors who are in SNAP. Phil says he sent information five years prior and he is angry because even the Boston Globe didn’t pursue the story earlier.

Mike’s persistence makes him a good reporter, and he gets the lawyer Garabedian to let him interview Patrick (Jimmy LeBlanc), a victim in one of the cases. He doesn’t want Mike to use his name because he has a child now, and he wants to keep the story hidden out of shame. His father committed suicide and his mother was schizophrenic. Here we have a vulnerable person that can be groomed at the age of twelve. The priest took him for ice cream and then started touching the boy. Mike observes that there are needle marks on Patrick’s arm, which verifies what Phil said about the effects on victims. Patrick here confesses to a journalist instead of a priest, and it is cathartic. He then allows Mike to use his name and says to get “these assholes.”

Mike’s interview alternates with Sacha talking to Joe (Michael Cyril Creighton), who realized he was gay at a young age, and when the priest urged him to have sex with him, Joe felt it was like a holy man was saying it was okay to be gay. Later in life the realization that he was abused selfishly by the priest traumatized associations he had with men, even though it was his sexual orientation. Just walking by his neighborhood’s Catholic church brings back awful memories, showing how he can’t escape the pain of the past. She also finds out that Joe talked to lawyer Eric McLeish who discouraged lawsuits, which he didn’t mention before. More covering up the truth.

Mike and the others thoroughly research the information and realize there has been an epidemic of sexual assaults by priests on children who had “shame” in their lives, so the pedophiles knew the children would not want to add to that feeling by exposing their predators. Mike discovers that the Church began smear campaigns to discredit anyone who tried to expose these priests. In an archive that lists the priests by name and when they arrived and left parishes. Matt (Brian Darcy James) notes that the priests under investigation all were discharged on “sick leave,” or reassigned, blanket cover-up designations. There is a bad smell which turns out to be a dead rat in the room, a symbolic addition that comments on how the whole situation is rotten.

Sacha and Robby go back to McLeish and find out he was part of sweeping the abuse under the Church’s rug. He didn’t even file action in the court system but kept the meager settlements between his office and the archdiocese, who have the records that the Spotlight team can’t access. There were confidentiality agreements so McLeish can’t divulge names. As Sacha later says he received a third of all the settlements and the rest of the information was hidden by the Church.

Marty is treated like an alien when he goes to a Catholic Charities Appeal dinner. Pete Conley (Paul Guilfoyle), on the board of the Charities, vouches for his attendance there, trying to ingratiate himself and by extension, the Church. Robby is also there, and although he is not part of the organization, he has friends who are, and he went to the Catholic school across from the Boston Globe. The connection is ironic, showing the pull of the past versus the current outlook on those ties. Later Robby finds that a suspected priest was at his high school and molested a friend. Adding to this irony, Robby does investigating at this affair by interrogating Jim Sullivan (Jamey Sullivan) about his activity in helping a priest. Sullivan dismisses the questions and says that the people there in connection with the Church have done a great deal of good for the city. The film raises the question, without announcing it, does that good justify the atrocities that the priests perpetrated?

Mike meets with lawyer Garabedian, who is Armenian. Mike is Portuguese, but was born in Boston. Garabedian says that Marty is Jewish, and it takes an outsider in this case to investigate an entrenched, sacred institution. He also says that if it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes one to “abuse” that child. He sees this insulated Catholic Boston world as a fortress that must be attacked. When asked, Mike says that his wife does not like that he spends so much time working, and it turns out he is separated. The lawyer says he never married because what he does is “too important” to be distracted by a married life. Here we have the tradeoff between one’s own personal happiness and social purpose. Later, Garabedian tells Mike that he had a priest, who was threatened with exile to South America unless he kept quiet about abuse, who confessed to the lawyer. But the archdiocese stopped legal documents attesting to the cover-up to be made public, so powerful is the Church in Boston at this time. (Garabedian is eating often when he meets with Mike, attesting to how he must get nourishment on the run to fit his always busy work. And Mike is always running, which shows he has the same mindset).

On a telephone call, Richard Sipe (the voice of actor Richard Jenkins), a psychotherapist, gives statistics from a report as far back as 1985 that the Church knew about, including Cardinal Law, that there could be 90 priests (research indicates the number is 87) who are pedophiles in Boston. Sipes says he may not be a member of the Church anymore, but “the Church is an institution, Mike, made of men; it's passing. My faith is in the eternal. I try to separate the two.” The film implies that is the conclusion of many Catholics that keep their faith in their religion even if they have lost that faith in the Catholic Church.

To show how this abuse hits close to home, reporter Matt sees the address of one of the probable priests in treatment down the block from his house.

Robby confronts McLeish again and threatens by saying they could write a story about lawyers who made money off the settlements unless he gets the names of the priests and the victims. McLeish says he sent a list a while back to the Globe because he needed the newspaper’s backing if he was going to go public. Saviano, who heads up SNAP, also said he sent information to the Globe before. Apparently, the story was buried. So, the newspaper is not without sin in this story.

McLeish resends the list he forwarded before with 47 priests noted. Marty says it’s more important that they show the system is corrupt, that the cover-up was systemic, instead of just focusing on the individual priests. The implication here is that the problem will have a limited focus unless they expose the wider conspiracy.

A montage showing Sacha hitting the bricks, interviewing residents, including a policeman who says nobody wants to put “cuffs” on a priest. They show how it wasn’t just those in power who kept a lid on the abuse. Neighbors exerted peer pressure to keep things silent. One victim said his mother “put out cookies” for the clergy. The movie shows the darker side of religion when its grip on people’s lives becomes dark instead of enlightening.

Sacha has a breakthrough when she talks to one ex-priest, Ronald Paquin (Richard O’Rourke) who admits to “fooling around” with boys. But he says he received no “satisfaction” from the experiences. He didn’t rape anybody because he knows the difference because he himself was raped. So, the film shows that abuse perpetuates itself, and here is a priest who doesn’t even understand his own pathology or the harm he inflicted on others. As Sacha leaves Paquin’s house, two boys ride by on bikes, emphasizing how close possible victims can be to predators.

The tragedy of 911 puts a major delay on the Spotlight story, but Mike works on getting the documents that Garabedian mentioned made public, and Robby and Sacha go to Robby’s old high school where a Father Talbot molested his friend. They find more obstruction of information. It seems to Robby that everyone in power knows the true story, except them, and they are the newspaper, the emphasis here is on “news.”

Mike gets a judge to finally allow the public records to actually become public. The records show that Cardinal Law quashed the evidence on the notorious Father Geoghan who molested several children. Make is angry that Robby doesn’t want to run the story until they get information on the covering up of more than one priest’s actions. The implication here is that Robby doesn’t want the Church to get the chance to shut the story down before its implications show more widespread atrocities.

The story not only affects Robby personally because of the molesting priest at his high school. Sacha won’t go to mass anymore with her grandmother. Mike says he liked going to church when he was younger and always thought he would return to it before this story came to them.

Conley, the Catholic Charities board member, meets Robby and tries to put a wedge between Robby and Marty, saying the latter doesn’t care about Boston and is just trying to advance his own career and move on. He then subtly threatens Robby by saying how Robby will still be in Boston. The suggestion here is that Robby could suffer the fallout of the investigation into the Church. Robby retaliates by saying they will be running the story.

Children sing “Silent Night” in the background since it is approaching Christmas. The voices of the innocents contrast with the crimes against youths as Mike types up parts of the story. Robby gets lawyer Sullivan to acknowledge the priests who he helped protect for the Church. The reporters note that the festival of the Epiphany approaches in the Catholic calendar, which they say is an appropriate word for the revelation that is coming.

Robby tells the others, including Marty and Ben, that he was the Metro head at the time when the information came to the newspaper in 1993 and didn’t follow up on the priests’ abuse. So, it was his and the Globe’s fault along with the others that contributed to the news not getting out. Everyone was involved. Marty says that sometimes we “stumble” in the “dark” until a light shows us the “blame” that goes around. The title of the news outfit and the name of the movie points to that epiphany, where the spotlight shows us the truth. But, it’s better late than never to right wrongs.

The effect of the story is widespread and personal, as the impact hits Sacha’s grandmother. Matt says he has been writing a horror novel, fiction as opposed to the actual horror in life. The film ends with the Spotlight team receiving numerous calls from victims who now feel safe enough to tell their stories.

The end notes state that the Globe published close to 600 stories on the abuse. 249 were accused of abuse in the Boston archdiocese. There were well over 1000 victims. Cardinal Law resigned, but instead of punishment he was assigned to a high-ranking post in the Church in Rome which shows how the Church still refused to acknowledge its part in the scandal.

Mark Ruffalo in one of the extras attached to the film states that you can’t have a free society without a free press.