Why Spotlight Should Win Best Picture

Spotlight has garnered six Academy Award nominations this year, including Best Picture. In fact, the film is one of the front-runners, along with The Revenant. I'm not naive. I realize that many moviegoers gravitate toward The Revenant because of its plot, its actors, and its environment.

While Spotlight takes place mostly inside the offices of the Boston Globe and its surrounding areas, The Revenant takes you through the snowy, grim wilderness of the western United States. The Revenant may be more attractive than Spotlight, but that sure as hell doesn't make it a better movie.

Now I'll admit that when I saw a movie taking on the Catholic Church, who covered up the molestation of young, poverty-stricken children, it immediately caught my attention. I was raised Catholic. My father and his family were devout Catholics. I went to church. I went to Sunday School. I had my First Communion. And I watched my brother and sister do the same. It wasn't until I reached 5th grade, which coincidentally enough was when the story first broke, where I was given the choice to decide if I wanted to continue with religion or not. I chose not to. I couldn't really tell you why. Maybe I thought it was bullshit; I'm not really sure, but I can tell you that I haven't regretted it one bit.

So with the plot line catching my eye, the second thing I looked at was the cast. And it's an all-star lineup, led by Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and perhaps the most underrated actor in Hollywood, Mark Ruffalo. But we'll get to him later. Add in Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, and John Slattery, and you have an ensemble that meshes and feeds off each other perfectly.

But the limited theater release meant that I was going to have to wait to see it when it either came out on DVD or some other digital platform. Eventually, my local movie theater played it for a week after it received the Best Picture nomination. I was there the first night it played. And for the first time in a long time, I got up, put my jacket on, walked out of the theater with absolutely nothing to say. I was speechless. The movie blew my mind.

This movie is about investigative journalism at its finest. If All the President's Men set the bar, Spotlight reached it, and maybe even nudged it a little bit higher. It's a brilliant take on one of the darker moments in world history, and it does so in a calculated and meticulous way. 

Marty Baron, the new editor at the Boston Globe, asks the Spotlight team, a group of four investigative reporters, to consider digging deeper into the potential systemic molestation and coinciding church cover up after John Geoghan, a priest, was accused and convicted of molesting countless children in the Boston area. A story starting with one priest turned out to be something much, much larger, and Spotlight effectively takes the viewer through the unveiling of the Catholic church's darkest secret.

For every victim they interview, you feel their pain. You imagine what it would have been like if it was you. For every time these reporters get stonewalled, you feel the anguish and frustration. For every answer and revelation they receive, you feel the same shock and surprise that the reporters feel. In the end, the movie takes you through an incredible array of emotions, ranging from anger at the system, to sympathy for the victims. 

But along the way, you don't just learn about how the church covered it all up. You learn how a city helped aid the Catholic church along the way. Perhaps the most telling quote of the entire movie, and trust me there are plenty, was when Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) tells Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) "If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one." Everyone knew something was going on, but nobody wanted to talk about it, even the Boston Globe as the movie points out. Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) admits to receiving information that at least 20 priests were molesting children in 1995, but instead buried it in the Metro section instead of giving it its due diligence.

Speaking of Keaton, Ruffalo, and Tucci, this movie doesn't hit home and have its impact if it weren't for its incredible cast. Schreiber, playing Baron, has the steely-eyed, unfazed demeanor of a savvy veteran who knows exactly what he is getting into. He's the calming force, always requesting more to be done. John Slattery, who plays Ben Bradlee Jr., is Baron's perfect foil, always questioning the story and its validity. But the real heavy-lifting is done by the Spotlight team itself: McAdams, Keaton, Ruffalo, and Brian d'Arcy James.

McAdams shows the sensitivity and tenacity to gather information from all the victims, and even a priest, that she meets to uncover the incredible horrors that they had gone through. d'Arcy James uses his innate ability to find tendencies and links between reports and past newspaper clips. And Keaton plays the strong-headed boss who refuses to be intimidated by the church, its lawyers, or its public relations people. He portrays Robinson as a level-headed decision-maker, but also as the backbone and strength behind the team. He's Boston-bred, but he makes it clear where his allegiances lie from the very get-go.

However, the best performance of the movie has to go to Ruffalo, who is low-key one of the best actors in Hollywood right now. He was on a different level. If you think Keaton showed tenacity, wait until you see Ruffalo portray Rezendes. He's the one that writes the story, and he's the one that finally gets the tight-lipped Garabedian to give him some damning information about the church. The story continues to eat away at him, and it shows. He's constantly running to the courthouse, catching cabs, running back and forth to the office, and it all culminates when he discovers the years of ignorance and deception by the church as he is almost moved to tears in the best scene of the entire movie.

I really don't care what genres you're into because this movie will inspire you. It's proof that there is still fantastic journalism being done, and sometimes we need the media to shed light on something dark and disgusting because you know higher authorities won't do anything about it. Trust me, the media isn't all bad. The majority are good, and they are working for the common good. You just have to know where to look. If nothing else, this movie makes you think. It makes you think that if the Catholic church can cover up sexual abuse for that long without anyone knowing about it, what else is out there that we don't know?

Hopefully, for the sake of all of us, we have a team like Spotlight to expose it for us.