Review of Spotlight (2015) by Quade C — 28 Mar 2016

There's an interesting line by one of the characters used as a source in the ultimate expose on abuse within the Catholic Church by upwards of 90 priests throughout the decades. This character was an ex-priest who wrote a book from his time spent inside one of the treatment centers in order to determine whether this priests could return to duty, as it were.

This character, who's only heard from telephone calls, admits to Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) that he still remains a Catholic in spite of everything, the church trying to discredit him and his findings.

He then says something that was very wise. He says that the institution was created by men, his faith, however, is in the eternal and how they are two completely different things. And I think that's something that's so relevant to this and the real-life people that wrote this article that exposed, and rightfully so, so many pedophile priests.

They're not going after religion itself, they're going after the institution that allowed these priests, by reassigning them to other parishes in other states, to continue to sexually abuse children.

There's also an interesting approach to this by one of the victims of this abuse, Phil Saviano, who says that the abuse isn't just physical, it's also spiritual. These kids are taught to respect priests as being the voice of god on this earth, so you should do whatever they tell you or else it's like you're saying no to god.

And I've never actually seen that side of it until now. Of course there's the physical and mental aspects of being sexually abused as a child by one of these priests, but I never actually thought about the spiritual aspect until watching this film.

These priests destroy these kids' faith and trust in the church to the point that they never want anything to do with it again. And it's not like you can blame them. You get to see, as the film tells its story, that there's a pattern these priests use to go after children that are more viable to do whatever it is they want them to do.

They come from broken, poor homes without fathers. They're easier to be groomed or taken advantage of. It's a completely fucked up system and the film does a great job at exposing that, in spite of all the lurid details surrounding the abuse itself.

One of the things that really struck me about this film is the fact that the story starts off 'simply' with a tale of one priest suspected of sexually molesting children being moved from parish to parish each time he was accused of it.

The more they uncover about this one priest, the more they discover about how this is actually a systemic issue where the church has actually cut some deals with the families affected by abuse in order to keep them quiet and avoiding a scandal.

The church is portrayed, essentially, as a legal mafia. They have so much power and influence, everybody in the film is afraid to get into a legal fight with them for fear that the church will destroy them with their lawyers.

It's quite something to see. I've never been a fan of the church, or religion for that matter, but the fact of the matter is that they really did behave like a legal mafia in order to protect their own name.

They knew there was a problem and they did nothing, they were protecting their own interests, since the catholic church brings in billions of dollars every year. It's a business, it's not a religious institution and this film illustrates that point perfectly.

Honestly, this movie is nothing short of fantastic in how it handles its subject matter and its characters. Because it would've been easy to lionize these reporters for what they did, like Clint Eastwood did for Chris Kyle in American Sniper, completely overlooking the fact that he was a psychopath that enjoyed killing.

But this film, thankfully, doesn't do that. One of the film's major themes is the fact that Cardinal Law knew about this and he did nothing, he kept moving these priests from parish to parish, therefore allowing the abuse to continue.

So, obviously, fingers start to be pointed and the blame game about who was guilty of what. But it turns out that the Boston Globe, the newspaper Spotlight works for, had information regarding at least 20 priests dating back years prior to them tackling this subject as a serious article.

So, really, they also knew and they did nothing, since they buried the information in a section of the newspaper that nobody read and failed to follow up on it. Perhaps they're not as guilty as those that defended the priests or the church itself for keeping them in the system, but the Globe did hold some responsibility for not really making as big of an issue about it, despite having information and names for years.

Of course these people are heroes, for finally blowing this story wide open and how their story led to thousands of people, from so many different countries, coming forward with their own stories of abuse.

But it's nice to see the movie hold back on trying to create angels out of these characters, because they were also flawed in how late they finally came around to the story, even if they finally did get right in the end.

The writing of the film is fantastic, it's like a great mystery without the actual mystery, since you know that all of what they're reporting are facts. The acting is top-notch as well, not in that typical Oscar-winning way, though Mark Ruffalo really was fantastic in the movie, but there's a certain chemistry to the cast.

Like they were an actual investigative team that has worked together for years, there's a familiarity to how they interact with each other. Is it the best movie of the year, however, that is up to debate.

I still thought the best, or my favorite movie at least, of the year was Mad Max: Fury Road. It was just a masterpiece from beginning to end. This is, obviously, the more traditional Best Movie winner over Fury Road and I think that's what the Academy were going for.

This movie, again, is fantastic and I really do think it needs to be seen. Do I think it's the best movie of 2015? Not really, but that's my opinion and I don't hold it against anyone who thought it was.

It really is a special and important piece of work that has to be seen. I would highly recommend this movie.