Newsroom honesty in ‘Spotlight’ tells a brutal true story with respect and importance

The greatness in “Spotlight” comes from its simplicity. Nothing about it is flashy. There are no huge sets, no cast of thousands. Neither the music nor the cinematography is in your face. The costumes and post-production edits never draw attention to themselves.

By taking all the “movie” elements out of the focus, the actual spotlight of the film lands on the two most important components: the story and all the people in it.

With a subject as serious as sexual abuse in a religious setting, the filmmakers had to make sure this story was told right, told fair and told with purpose, just as the real journalists had to 15 years ago. The Academy Award-winning screenplay and the performances by the amazing actors proved that this is not only a perfectly made film, but an important one, too.

In 2001, the new editor of The Boston Globe, Marty Baron, assigns a team of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, an unfrocked priest accused of molesting more than 80 kids.

Led by Spotlight editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (played by Michael Keaton), reporters Mike Rezendes (played by Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll (played by Brian d’Arcy James) and Sacha Pfeiffer (played by Rachel McAdams) interview survivors and plead the courts the release of sensitive documents connected to the case.

After several months of interviews, the reporters discover an even bigger story surrounding more than 70 accused priests. They make it their mission to provide proof of a sex-abuse cover-up within the Catholic Church throughout the Boston archdiocese.

First and foremost, the actors deserve all the praise they’ve earned and more for their portrayals of all the real people in this movie. As much as new-editor Baron—portrayed by Liev Schreiber who plays Baron as a tough professional that knows the truth is what matters most—wants the Spotlight team to investigate the story, many of the reporters and their editor have reservations about doing the story.

Robby Robinson, a native Bostonian and long-time Boston journalist, is skeptical about the team tackling the story, unsure about their chances of winning over the Globe’s readers, most of whom are Irish-Catholic. He spends most of the two-hour runtime convincing his reporters to hold back what they have until every last angle of the story is covered right.

But the rest of the investigative team’s determination sells the story’s importance and timeliness. As Rezendes (Ruffalo’s character) says in the final act of the movie, “They knew and they let it happen… It could have been you, it could have been me, it could have been any of us.”

And that may be the scariest part. Every actor is portraying a real person, not only film’s stars, which include Stanley Tucci and John Slattery. Many of the real people knew about what happened and either didn’t or couldn’t say anything to the authorities. Handling these key scenes and doing with both victims’ and reporters’ feelings in mind was huge and right.

For a movie that takes place in Boston, the actors’ accents are jarring because they aren’t typical caricatured Boston accents. They’re actually much subtler and harder to pin down, which can be distracting. But after 20 minutes of movie, the story is so engaging that the way anyone sounds doesn’t even matter.

Even though the technical side of the film doesn’t draw attention to itself, the filmmaking is done smartly and effectively, and it will most likely go unnoticed unless looked for. In the first act, nearly every shot of a conversation is done from a distance and over the shoulder with someone’s head or shoulder out of focus in the foreground. By shooting this way, the viewer’s point of view is as an outsider who’s just observing.

But once the meat of the story is explored—and discussions and interviews become more personal—the camera is right in the action. Everyone is fully in frame together, and over-the-shoulder close-ups don’t show the other actors. Now the characters are talking directly with and to the audience.

In order to keep these key moments real, no music is played. The score is minimal throughout, always slower, steadier and quieter. When it does appear, it’s only for transitions when the story changes time and setting, eventually becoming the audience’s cue that the story is moving forward. But when something factual is happening in real-time, the silence is golden.

Although the story is about the church, many lawyers and editors tell the reporters to refer to it as the “Institution,” which is perfect for the film’s basic conflict: the Institution versus the Truth. When the church and lawyers become allies in trying to keep the scandal out of the public’s eyes, the two almost become inseparable, making it harder to take them down. In this way, it’s really an underdog story where the truth and truth tellers have an uphill struggle the whole way.

During almost every investigation or interview scene or sequence, there is a church in the background. Whether it’s talking to victims, lawyers and priests or just sitting outside the courthouse, there’s nearly always a church nearby. Because the church is synonymous with the institution, it’s as if Big Brother is always watching and the Spotlight team can’t escape its influence, making their struggle all the more difficult.

As a journalist, this is my kind of superhero movie. Just as with “All the President’s Men,” getting to the truth and telling the real story is what it’s all about. With something as important as this story, the men and women who brought it to light are heroes. And the men and women who brought it to the silver screen are heroes, too.

Johnny Depp is unrecognizabley great in ‘Black Mass’

About one hour into Scott Cooper’s biopic of Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, a hoodlum who tipped off the feds gets gunned down by Whitey in a parking lot in front of half a dozen people. This is probably the fourth person Whitey has killed in the movie so far, and the witnesses are shocked by these brutal acts of violence every time.

But the people in the theater have grown practically numb.

Not once does the movie try to be anything it isn’t. The story of the most notorious and most wanted gangster of the past 50 years is full of cheaters and liars, sex and drugs, violence and bullheadedness and just plain awful human behavior. But it never seems out of character, and it never seems fake.
I honestly don’t know if that’s really good on the part of the filmmakers or really bad that everyone else is just so used to it.

John Connolly and James “Whitey” Bulger grew up together on the streets of South Boston, though fate would lead them down different paths in life. Decades later in the late 1970s, they would meet again, but not by accident.

By then, Connolly (played by Joel Edgerton) was a major figure in the FBI’s Boston office, and Whitey (played by a nearly unrecognizable Johnny Depp) had become godfather of the Irish Mob, practically ruling Boston from the underground. All the while, Whitey’s brother Bill (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) remains a powerful leader in the Massachusetts Senate, making both Connolly and Whitey’s jobs very difficult.

What happened between them—a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston’s Italian Mafia in the process—would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments and, ultimately, to Bulger making the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Except for the overly graphic ways people are knocking each other off and sending them to sleep with the fishes, nothing about “Black Mass” is particularly noteworthy or memorable for being new. No cinematography style, no storytelling method and no technical effects or editing is any different from any other gangster movie of the past 20 years.

However, none of that matters, because the cast devotes their whole selves to their roles. Johnny Depp gives one of his best performances in nearly a decade, and come awards season many others will think the same thing. If you didn’t know it was Depp as Bulger, you’d never guess. Pale in skin and hair, a dead front tooth and a wheezy laugh and piercing blue eyes, Bulger is much scarier than your suave and sexy Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro.

But the way Scott Cooper directs Depp makes him an anti-hero that we both love to hate and hate to love. He’s an awful person, but he’s just so cool. He drinks ginger ale instead of downing shots. He’s loyal to his brother and mother before even his closest confidants. He won’t hesitate to take out a rat who talked to the feds, but he also won’t hesitate to help an old lady in his neighborhood carry her groceries home. It’s a fine line between heartless villain and complex anti-hero, and Depp walks that line perfectly.

Everyone on screen performs their roles the best they can. It’s just too bad no one is worth rooting for. Usually in these movies there is that one FBI agent that you root for the whole way through. Or one of the gangsters is trying so hard not to follow in his family’s footsteps or something like that.

But everyone here has their own selfish agenda for their own personal gain and no one comes off as the good guy. It’s just some bad guys are breaking the law and the other bad guys are fudging the paperwork so they can break the law legally. No one is a real hero here.

Maybe if the story didn’t have so many half-developed scenes and ideas, the characters would have been able to grow and develop more as well.

Unfortunately, time moves so quickly in the life of Whitey Bulger, it goes from 1975 to 1981 in a matter of minutes without any evidence of anyone changing over those six years. Are you really telling me nothing happened for six years in the life of the most notorious gangster in the history of Boston?

“The Godfather” is 2 hours 55 minutes long and both “Goodfellas” and “The Departed” are both 2 and a half hours, but “Black Mass” is barely over the two hour mark. For once, I want a movie to be 30 minutes longer just so I can understand a bit more of what’s going on. Dive into what really makes these character tick.

Show a bit of what happened between ’75 and ’81, and then again between ’81 and ’86. Develop the themes and ideas that get started but never fully blossom. Show me just how dangerous and infamous Whitey Bulger actually is.

The movie is great and Johnny Depp is phenomenal as Bulger—possibly the best male performance of the year so far. But several years from now, few people are going to remember it. I probably won’t watch it again, but I’m glad I saw it once. You will be, too.