by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Oscar-season is notorious for its love of pageantry and bombast, frequently rewarding films that are BIG, LOUD, and IMPORTANT. It’s such a well-established cliche that people have been ripping on it since at least Wayne’s World, if not before.
So how was it that Spotlight, a quiet and unassuming movie about quiet and unassuming people, managed to weather the media hype surrounding the action blitzkrieg of Mad Max: Fury Road and the bison-liver-chomping circus of The Revenant and emerge as the Best Picture winner of this year’s Oscar ceremony?
Spotlight follows a group of Boston Globe reporters (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy) as they investigate reports of sexual abuse by Boston priests against young children. The more the group probes into the story, the more they unearth unsettling truths about the church, the city, and even The Globe itself.
Hovering on the sidelines of the investigation are the likes of Stanley Tucci as a crusading attorney and Billy Crudup as a compromised one, the detective from CSI (Paul Guilfoyle) and Jamey Sheridan as friendly faces that grow darker and darker as the investigation continues, Liev Schrieber and John Slattery as Globe bosses, and the voice of Richard Jenkins as a source that points the Spotlight team to truths the might never have considered.
Spotlight took some nasty blows during the awards season horserace, with much of the attacks centering on the subdued visual style utilized by director/co-writer Tom McCarthy, known for previous Two Cents pick (The Station Agent and that one movie where Adam Sandler has magic shoes or something. With all that sturm and drang now subdued, we decided to watch the movie with fresh eyes and see if Spotlight still shines.
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
Let’s take the hardest of possible left turns and follow Spotlight up with a film that is set worlds (and centuries) away.
Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans may today be best known as one of the earliest “Daniel Day-Lewis is a fucking nutter butter” stories, but it retains a passionate following that consider it one of, if not the, very best thing America’s poet laureate of cinematic masculinity ever committed to film.
The Last of the Mohicans has long been in the request pile, so let’s give it a whirl and see what we think.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
Our Guests
Trey Lawson:I love a good “journalists overcoming systemic obstacles to tell the world an important story” movie, so I was pretty happy to have an excuse to finally check out Spotlight. Based on the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team and its investigation into child abuse by priests, the film features a stellar cast including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Stanley Tucci, as well as a fantastic screenplay that deftly balances the drama of narrative film with the burden of representing a true story. My only real issue is a problem more or less inherent to the genre; the thrust of the narrative is the very act of chasing the story, and so once it is written/told, the movie ends. That makes sense, I suppose, but it always seems to me a bit anticlimactic, especially when there is enough fallout from it that there are several screens of text at the end to give viewers an idea of what happened next. But that is a minor quibble, and definitely doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the film in any substantial way (For what it’s worth All the President’s Men, which I revisited just after watching Spotlight, has a similarly abrupt ending). Ultimately, Spotlight is not just good but important, as it helps remind us all of the importance of a free, well-funded press as a key Fourth Estate in society.
(@T_Lawson)
The Team
Frank: It’s been a while since a Best Picture winner actually deserved the Oscar it won, but Spotlight definitely earned that top prize and more with what was one of the most engrossing films of last year.
I have nothing but applause at the film’s bravery in dealing with its controversial subject and the utmost respect for how it so delicately executed the plights of its real-life characters. The film could have so easily been played for sensationalism and pure shock, but Tom McCarthy’s film does a superb job in telling the story of how one of the largest scandals ever to be covered up by a powerful organization was finally brought to light. The film is made with such a fine and steady hand, that every moment resonates with a jarring power that’s impossible to dismiss.
At the same time, there are a great many scenes which prove incredibly cinematic. Moments such as Ruffalo’s emotional implosion and his sad gaze upon the choir of children singing “Silent Night” during midnight mass purely hit home and moves the audience to no end.
Beyond just showing how the controversy at hand was unearthed, Spotlight should be known as one of the finest movies about investigative journalism ever committed to film. The movie instantly joins the ranks of All the President’s Men and Absence of Malice as a great document of what it means to not only search for the truth, but to fight for it as well. The respective journeys of each of the four reporters illustrates their relentless determination and personal torment beautifully, reminding the audience what a tireless and vital profession these individuals undertake. (@frankfilmgeek)
Brendan: The Spotlight stories on Boston priest molestation is one of the first big news stories that I remember. I would’ve been about 11 when the Globe started landing on our doorstep with images of scowling old men on the front page. As a church-every-Sunday Catholic household, the initial horror was replaced with an even more discomforting feeling as more and more victims came forward and more and more priests were implicated. When the Father at our local church was replaced shortly thereafter, there were rumblings among the kids that maybe he had been removed because of the scandal. I’ve honestly been too scared to ever look up whether or not that was true.
Spotlight, among its many other virtues, captures that gnawing dread as the scope of the abuse is steadily unveiled. What begins as the irresponsible handling of a few bad apples spirals into the revelation of an epidemic of the worst abuse possible, a system that willfully consumes and corrupts the young while the world blithely turns.
Mr. Lawson above criticized the “abrupt” ending to the film, and he’s not wrong. But that ending may be the thing I love most about the film. It would have been easy to close the movie with the Spotlight team collecting their Pulitzer to roaring applause, the kind of “YAY, US!” backslapping that the media fucking loves the slather onto movies about the media. But McCarthy refuses easy, histronic triumph. The heroes succeed so they may be tested again. They work, and their reward is more work. It’s the only ending possible for a film so consumed with what it means to be a good Catholic.
(@TheTrueBrendanF)
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