Spotlight: Tom McCarthy, 2016: Lies And Corruption Within The Church

Films these days rarely bring the issues of journalism to light, but McCarthy challenges the notion of the opinions of hard hackers by directing a film that disproves some of the negative associations. Making a box office of $92.2 million, it evidently shows that the film was vastly popular, and taught the audience how journalists can bring such disgusting issues to light, which is the church. sex abuse scandal in this case. With a leading cast of Mark Ruffalo; Rachel McAdams; and Michael Keaton, the film elicits how journalists go through extreme lengths to rack up cases and find out the facts. Keaton’s character navigates a community who are catholic, working on a story for a paper that was at the time, too deferential to the church. Michael Rezendes, played by Mark Ruffalo in the film, is the only journalist involved in the investigation still working on the Spotlight team. Rezendes describes the experience of having his story turned into a movie as “strange and intrusive”, but he’s a big fan of the finished product.

Despite this, it could be argued that the film has caused some controversy. There is this conception that the film doesn't necessarily bring the reality of journalism and the actual concept of it. Even though the cinematography, dialogue and visuals all aid to the narrative which elicits the serious issues of exposing a powerful and sacred institution, which must be shown to the public, as the film can spark up some intense debates. It is so easy to forget that the church is so powerful. Given that 32.5% of the world population are of a christian religion, the magnitude of a case this intense, and outing so many people who have such power is a dangerous one. Not only did the Spotlight team have to prove more than 130 allegations that came forward, but they had to try and avoid breaking ethical obligations and defamation, which in this case, was subsequently difficult, especially as they were trying to uncover the church and the sexual abuse over the course of 30 years. The Spotlight team spent approximately nine to twelve months on research in 2001, but they didn’t publish the articles until 2002, as 9/11 occurred and overshadowed this story.

It isn’t a surprise that when McCarthy was first approached to direct, he turned it down. The amount of pressure any director would be under is substantial, it was quoted that McCarthy said “I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”. The whole process of of exploring the exposure of this sexual abuse, how the Boston Globe publicised this story through the news, graft a star-heavy cast and correlate it to the “based on a true story” ideology is a task to say the least. A film purely about a group of journalists who uncover a taboo, by filing through tonnes of paperwork could’ve flopped, but it somehow didn’t. McCarthy also stated that passing the job role the first time was “probably some indication of how intimidating it was.” Regardless of the difficulty McCarthy faced, he portrayed the real life event with conventions of journalism which are true to life.The majority of the audience wouldn’t necessarily pick these up, however, they will decode the response, which also is in correlation to the hypodermic needle theory, which aids the response that McCarthy wants to elicit from the audience. Sacha Pfeiffer, another member of the spotlight team, who was played by Rachel McAdams, stated that “We talked on the phone, we do data entry, we looked at court records. Good luck making that interesting.” But there wasn’t necessarily a need to sensationalise the story, otherwise it wouldn’t be true to real life events. It is the idea that it was more in regards to the scale to the scandal, which was compelling enough.

In relation to journalism, the text shows journalism as realistically as possible, with the exception of narrative manipulation. Trying to tackle the research process is one section, but forming the script all together must have taken a lot of time and consideration. They must relay the events to the target audience, but appeal to them with a lot more anticipation, and with the use of non-diegetic sound, cinematography and of course, popular stars. This text is very important when looking at journalism in “full swing”. The detail McCarthey has elicited to make the narrative as true as possible is impressive. The sexual abuse scandal in the church was a part of many cases. The Boston Globe unravelled cases spanning over a 30 year period. The Spotlight group uncovered the scandal, due to the Boston Globe hiring a new editor, who wished to uncover the church and their abuse. Mitchell Garabedian is quoted in the film “If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one.”

The audience may want to consider the level of realism in contrast to the level of manipulation. It may be hard to believe that this was an issue that was hidden for such a long time. Co-screenwriter Josh Singer says “I think the survivors would tell you they’re less interested in the church trying to make amends and more interested in the church protecting children in the future.” This story is parallel to the Jimmy Saville scandal and the BBC, where is such high power, that they wouldn’t want to uncover this, as they knew there could be a backlash due to the popularity of Saville. The church has so much power, all details of the abuse had to be accurate, and the articles had to correlate to the American NUJ code of conduct.

The film also highlights how the church is deemed to be a place of safety for all individuals, so this being the juxtaposition can truly put a dampener on communities' beliefs and opinions in regards to the catholic church. The spotlight team had identified 12 priests who they knew had been implicated in child sex abuse. Michael Rezendes has stated that: “Over the last two years the Vatican has defrocked something like 850 priests and sanctioned maybe 2,500 more. But in terms of policy, there has been very little systematic change.”