The Globe’s staff was uneasy about Baron’s arrival and anxious about rumors of layoffs after the paper’s acquisition by The NY Times.
Advertisement
The most passionate journalist on Spotlight is Mark Rezendes (Ruffalo, on target as usual), who can be a bulldog when needed, and is so committed to the story he can’t help exploding at his editor during a heated exchange. The film recently opened to critical acclaim. Having nailed that scene – and its attendant whiff of economic insecurity – with anthropological care, McCarthy proceeds to get everything else uncannily right, from the overstarched shirts and pleated khakis worn by the Globe’s male reporters to the drudgery of looking up old clips and cranking microfilm. These are people who are good at their job, employees who have earned a degree of latitude, and never abuse it. They arrive early and stay late, not to impress anyone, but because there is so much to be done.
SPOTLIGHT directed by Tom McCarthy, written by McCarthy and Josh Singer, with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and John Slattery. If “Citizen Kane” was a monumental narrative of operatic scope and visual ambition, and “All the President’s Men” a tautly paranoid thriller attuned to the dawning cynicism of its time, “Spotlight” has achieved something far more hard, marshalling a pure, unadorned style in the service of a story that rejects mythologizing in favor of disciplined, level-eyed candor.
For all of the important issues the film raises, it is still a movie, and McCarthy was aware that he wasn’t making a position paper. Liev Schreiber, as the Globe’s new editor Marty Baron, and Stanley Tucci, as a lawyer representing victims and skeptical of the paper’s commitment to the story, are especially strong. It’s Baron’s status as an outsider – as one character puts it, “an unmarried man of the Jewish faith who hates baseball” – that gives him the distance necessary to ask uncomfortable questions of an institution with which the Globe historically had a cozy relationship. It’s not easy to make an emotionally involving film in which some of the most pivotal moments are about phone calls and making copies of documents and a source circling names on a document – but save for a few overly dry moments, “Spotlight” prevails. This is the first time the award will be given to three honorees, who will be fêted with a Tribute celebrating their careers, culminating with their powerhouse collaboration in Tom McCarthy’s blisteringly true drama “Spotlight”.
Instead, you have Mark Ruffalo as Mike, a dogged reporter with a Caesar-style haircut and eyes that catalog everything in an instant. He’s played by Michael Keaton in a performance that will leave anyone who has ever worked at a newspaper in a state of shock. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi has created a subtle, slightly washed-out palette for “Spotlight”. And would the Globe actually have the, um, nerve to go after the most revered and powerful institution in the city? A director who has portrayed a reporter himself (The Wire), he’s plugged along quietly for years, releasing a series of understated films that nonetheless showcase actors at their best: a young Peter Dinklage in The Station Agent, the stifled agony of Richard Jenkins in The Visitor, the empathy of Paul Giamatti’s wrestling coach in Win Win. His instincts are similarly on point in “Spotlight”, which co-stars Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup as victims’ attorneys.
Advertisement
“Spotlight” is a movie about power, deference to power and the power of truth. Though it’s set in 2001 and 2002 – practically ancient times in the distressing recent history of newspapers – Spotlight feels both timeless and modern, a dexterously crafted film that could have been made anytime but somehow feels ideal for right now. His integrity as a filmmaker not only echoes the shared sensibility of the journalists he admires, but it also allows pain, betrayal and sadness to surface organically, without facile manipulation.
