It's a well-known fact among my social circle that I am what we in the film industry call "a total, straight-up, melodramatic-as-all-get-out, undeniable Drama Queen." I don't just love something, I worship and adore it like it's my firstborn child. I don't just hate something, I despise it with every fiber of my being. Like I said in my Pixels review, I'm a fangirl. And I have never, ever made any bones about that or attempted to temper it in any way.
So when a movie with four of my favorite actors, directed by the same guy who made one of the best independent films I'd ever seen (have I mentioned that you should watch The Station Agent? because you should really watch The Station Agent) popped up in my newsfeed...well...you can imagine the ensuing freak-out.
The fact that Ian has heard me incessantly going on and on about Spotlight for the last three or so months and hasn't yet locked me in the attic is a testament to the fact that I literally have the best boyfriend ever. For real though. Every other day: "Ian, we have to see Spotlight!" "I will die if I don't get to see Spotlight." "I already missed Freeheld, I will literally kill someone if I miss Spotlight too!" "IT'S NOT FAIR. I want to see Spotlight but it's not in Michigan yet!" "I will boycott the Oscars if Spotlight doesn't get any nominations." (Yes, I said that before I even saw it.) So, obviously, I have been dying to see this movie since I found out about it in July. And let me tell you, it was so worth the wait.
On the way back from the theater, I told Ian "You're going to have to review this movie, because if I do it, I promise you I won't be able to be objective. My review's basically going to look like 'ASDFKSADFKJHAFSIDU I F-ING LOVE IT I WANT TO MARRY THIS MOVIE AND HAVE TOM MCCARTHY'S BABIES AND CUDDLE MARK RUFFALO UNTIL JUDGEMENT DAY AND IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL AND SO SAD AND SO REAL THAT I AM GOING TO CRY THESE ARE HEROES AND THE AVENGERS CAN GO TO HELL.'" And, well, here we are. I promise I'll try to be more coherent than that, but that's the gist.
I loved Spotlight. Hands-down it is the best film that I have seen all year, and trust me, that's saying something. All summer I've felt starved for independent film, and all of a sudden this past few weeks I've seen Trumbo, Suffragette and Spotlight one after the other. That's like good-movie overload. And yet still, Spotlight stands out. But why?
For starters, the casting is beyond-the-pale fantastic. We all know Michael Keaton is basically an acting god, but he shines in this film simply by...well, actually, by not being Michael Keaton. My favorite kind of performance is when an actor makes me forget that I know who they are. And for the first ten minutes of Spotlight all I could think was, "Shit, he reminds me of my dad." And he did. For two hours I forgot that I was watching my favorites, because they embodied their characters in a way that sucked me into the story and wouldn't let me go. The scene where Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo's character) breaks down and rants about how close he and his friends came to being abused by priests had me in tears--because it was real. It wasn't a Hollywood-glamorized "epiphany" starring MARK RUFFALO, it was a painful realization by a man who cared too much and didn't know how else to respond. And damn it, I could identify with that more than I initially cared to admit.
Which brings me to the treatment of the painful subject matter of the film. And this is the truly brilliant thing about Spotlight: for a movie that's ostensibly about priests abusing children, we see very few children, even fewer priests, and absolutely no abuse. Think about that for a minute. How much buzz and controversy could they have stirred up by making a film that depicted small children being molested by trusted clergy? "SHOCKING! PROVOCATIVE! GROUNDBREAKING! HEARTBREAKING! OSCAR MATERIAL!" the headlines would have screamed. But McCarthy resisted that temptation and instead made a movie that was not about the abuse itself, but what the reporters had to go through to bring that abuse to light.
By making the film more about the team than about the scandal, McCarthy ensured that Spotlight would not become a sensationalistic piece of "Oscar-bait" that existed purely to make people feel bad about their non-tragic lives. On paper it sounds so oddly flat: "it's a movie about people writing a news article." But the emotions burst off the screen and bring the story to life. There's nothing dry or boring about the frustration, shock, pain, anger, desperation and, finally, exhilaration that the team experiences as they force to the surface a story that so many wanted to remain buried. Now, as I said, this is in part due to the brilliant performances, but the rest of it is in the writing and direction.
The scenes in which the team speaks to abuse survivors are particularly strong. Again, these could have been over-the-top, exploitative sequences that were specifically engineered to make the audience squirm. Instead, we are forced to confront the painful reality that unlike, say, Von Trier's Antichrist--a film so gratuitously violent and sexually explicit that even my film school teachers shied away from playing it for us--this stuff actually happened to people. Do you know someone who's mutilated their own genitals after being confronted by a self-disemboweling fox? I sure don't. But I know people who have been betrayed and sexually abused by people they trusted, and that, to me, is far more terrifying than anything Von Trier could have dreamed up.
There's a scene towards the end of the film wherein Robby (Keaton) walks into his little office and hears phones ringing off the hook as survivors from all over Boston call in to talk about their experiences with the priests. It takes him a minute to comprehend what is happening, the effect his team's work has had, the backlash they might face, the exact size of the can of worms he's just opened--and all the good that might just come of it. There's no dialogue. The look on his face says it all. No, a news story can't undo the damage that the degenerate clergy has done. But the work he's done with his team can lead to a better future, and that, to him, is what really matters.
And that, to me, is the meaning behind Spotlight. That was why I told Ian, as we left the theater, "They are heroes." They are--I wasn't kidding when I compared them to the Avengers--but it's not because they won the Pulitzer Prize or blew the lid off of a disgusting conspiracy that never should have existed. It's because they knew something was wrong and they put every effort into making it right in the best way they knew how. Those are the kind of characters I can root for. That's the kind of story that I like to see.
That's the kind of movie that someday, I really, really want to make.
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