Spotlight

Spotlight is a movie that throws you against a wall, coddles you when it realizes you're hurt, then punches you in the face when it sees it's just a few scratches--it is absolutely brutal on your emotions. I did not actually want to see this movie, I didn't think it looked that interesting. Granted, I didn't actually know the extent of what this movie was exploring. I was not aware of just how big this story was. I think Spotlight executed this touchy topic really appropriately. It's done with a lot of care; that isn't to say that they tiptoed around the reality of the situation. There were parts where some of the things discussed were hard to listen to, but they were handled with a sensitive tone. I guess what I am saying is so many words is that, despite the situation being pretty gruesome and, frankly, gross, the information presented was not done to gross out and appall the audience. It was more to inform and the events were not exploited in order to increase shock value for the audience. I think that was extremely respectful, while also trying to inform the audience of the reality.
This movie points a spotlight on the section of the Boston Globe called "Spotlight" that in 2001 investigated the sex-abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and attempted to expose those who are committing these crimes, and in fact, the Spotlight team divulges more than they ever thought they would.

There was a lot of interesting aspects of this movie. All of the acting is extremely strong-- the cast is composed of some pretty well known and seasoned actors. There were a few points in this movie where there was some odd "funny" moments, mostly coming from Mark Ruffalo's character, a lot of the times it was his dedication to getting information for the story that was made into a sort of joke. His frantic demeanor when he was trying to get information no one else wanted him to have was quirky and jokey. That is, until there's a really out of place scene between Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton where Ruffalo starts shouting at Keaton because he doesn't think they are doing enough with the information he's done so much to get. I wasn't exactly turned off by the sharp turns in tone. I actually thought it was quite interesting in regards to the story how the tone shifted in certain parts of the movie (comedic, hopeful, desperate).

I thought it was really interesting how some of the sections of the movie focused more on the techniques, lifestyle, and work ethic of someone working in this line of journalistic work than the actual scandal they were reporting on. Sometimes, mostly when Mark Ruffalo's character was doing something, I would just be amazed at what they had to go through to get some of this information. You learn how they strategically release the information so people wouldn't just dismiss it like they had before. You learn how, with the 9/11 attacks, Spotlight wasn't able to investigate or release anything because everything news was bogged down in 9/11 stories. The debate over what records were public and what records were private was really interesting too. They didn't just tell you this work is super difficult, they showed you.
Something I really found interesting is how little background the audience receives about the Spotlight crew's background and lifestyles. We get that Mark Ruffalo is lying about his relationship with his wife and is actually living alone, but we never find out--are they separated? Divorced? Are they just staying away from each other a bit? Why? Did he do something wrong? Did she? None of that is answered, however, we understand enough about Mark Ruffalo's character from the fact that he lied about his personal life, as in, the seperation from his wife probably has to do with his dedication to his work. All we get from Rachel McAdams' character is that her grandmother attends church very consistently and what we gain from that is McAdams' character can no longer go with her grandmother to church because she is so disturbed by the things she is learning form the investigation. Little things like this where we don't know really anything about their lives but we know enough to learn about their personality traits in regards to their jobs and how what they do effects each of them individually. If you don't read into it, it is easy to just go wow there was no character development it was 100% about the development of the investigation but the audience actually learned just enough about our protagonists.
I really appreciate how the Spotlight team and the Boston Globe in general is not made out to be these amazing heroes. They reveal that much of this information was ignored by a lot of the Boston community and much of the journalistic community, but, in order to not exclude our team of protagonists from the blame, it is also revealed that Spotlight had received bits and pieces of the information they were looking for years prior to 2001. Our protagonists are not these blameless, perfect saviors, but they are doing what they can do to right the wrongs that have been committed against so many children, which is a lot more than we can say about basically everyone else involved in this scandal.

I've heard people praise this movie for giving hope to the situation, however I felt more disgusted and hopeless by the end of the movie than the beginning. Yes, the Spotlight team uncovered a whole lot of sex-abuse scandals and made them known to the public, but by the end of the movie you learn how common it is and how untouchable these priests are and at the very end of the movie  it shows the audience a list of places where this has happened not just in Boston and it's basically every major city in the world. It gave me little hope that this problem would be solved and I thought the end was particularly distressing. That is not to say that this movie isn't great--it is. I just do not agree with the general consensus that it evoked hopefulness because it did not.
One thing that really got me-- to a point where it just stuck with me through the whole movie-- was in the very beginning there is a caption telling us we are in Boston, Massachusetts and then the first shot of the movie is in a police station that says Boston PD really big on the wall and everyone is talking in thick Boston accents. If you are going to tell the audience that we are in Boston, don't then make it abundantly clear where we are--the audience isn't dumb and can figure it out for themselves where everything is taking place. If you are going to shove it in our faces that we're in Boston, please don't caption it as well, thanks.