Spotlight
Christian Movie Review

Many of the scenes have a powerful sort of awkward realism to them — more like the way real life feels. Tiny hints of shakiness in the camera work (but it’s not nauseating). Unflattering wide shots under the Boston Globe’s office lighting where we’d expect more dramatic, glitzy Hollywood-esque close-ups. Natural, sometimes imperfect rhythms in the dialogue where characters accidentally interrupt each other (like it would be in real life) — i.e. clumsily speaking over one another, and then awkwardly stopping. All of it adds a sense of inclusion because it feels like you’re witnessing something real. You don’t feel like the movie is treating you like an audience member at a movie theater who has paid to see a shiny Hollywood show. The film treats you as a fellow journalist, and you have been brought on to witness a very complex investigation and take notes. The film respects the moviegoer, in other words, and doesn’t talk down to you.

And as I mentioned in the introduction, the acting across the board, from the most minor characters to the Big Names, is just stellar. There’s moments of visual/directorial brilliance too, like the subtle addition of a father pushing his child on a swing in the background of a shot just as a voice-over is talking about the vulnerability of the child victims in the sex abuse cases.

That being said, I couldn’t help but notice some of my favorite Hollywood writing cliches. They don’t detract from the movie; I just find them funny. For example, screenwriters in Hollywood love doing this for some reason: they always make you think that some important tidbit of info is going to be said in a tense conversation between two characters, but then no one really says anything outright. So the first character walks away and just as they’re about to exit the room the other character suddenly turns and says, “Oh, and just so you know…(and then they finally say the dramatic info that the scene was building towards).” Love it. It’s just so melodramatic. (I think it would be hilarious if we all started doing this in our actual day-to-day conversations.)

Worldview & Themes of Redemption

The film paints a complex picture. It’s not a cartoonish, black and white portrayal of the problem with a neat arrangement of villain and hero. Everyone has blood on their hands. In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, Boston Globe editor Marty Baron (played with a perfectly meticulous, melancholic introversion by Liev Schreiber) makes this observation to his journalists who have just realized that everyone in the city, including the Globe, has helped enable the scandal: “Sometimes we forget that we spend most of our time stumbling in the dark. Suddenly a light gets turned on and there’s a fair share of blame to go around.”

The film has some clear themes of redemption. And when I say themes of redemption I mean story arcs in which characters have serious flaws or very intense wounds that have gone unhealed, but circumstances eventually help them overcome those flaws or find healing. We see victims who, after years of battling the demons of their traumatic abuse, find a measure of personal redemption and peace — or perhaps more like retribution — when the truth finally goes public on a very large, loud platform to the world. We also see the personal redemption of one of the journalists who helps
the story see the light of day — something that he had failed to do years prior when he had a similar chance.

And two of the journalists who helped expose the scandal mention that they go to church occasionally. (One of them goes to a Catholic church with a relative; the other goes to a Protestant church.)

Also, an ally to the Boston Globe team — a psychologist who gives them some crucial information that helps them succeed in exposing the scandal — is actually a devout Catholic. When the journalist asks the Catholic how he can still be a devout Catholic when the Church has become an active enemy trying to silence him, he gives an eye-opening reply: (paraphrased) “The Church is an institution of men, and it will pass away. It is temporary. But my faith is in the eternal. I keep the two separate.” In other words, because a group of deeply flawed human beings drags the name of Jesus in the mud and misrepresents Him with their actions does not mean that a person should turn away from faith in Christ and what He claimed about Himself in the Gospels.

Conclusion: “Spotlight” is a Deeply Sobering, Riveting Investigate Thriller

It’s more than just a movie about one of the biggest exposé news stories in history. “Spotlight” presents a textbook example of the saying, “Evil wins when good people do nothing.” In truth, this movie is a sobering look at the potential for corruption in every one of us — that in all of us there lies that fatal temptation to “look the other way” when the price of exposing something we know is wrong is too inconvenient and too much of a threat to our comfortable lives.

The terrible truth is that this kind of corruption — i.e. a large group of people choosing to ignore an evil instead of confronting it head on — tends to be the natural bent of human nature if left alone (with exceptions, of course). Such corruption is so easy for our fallen natures to embrace because it is self-centered and it’s the path of least resistance.

“Spotlight” does a brilliant job of reminding us that if we don’t speak up when we see something we know is wrong, then we become participants in the ruination of others. And in the case of the horrific Boston sex abuse scandal, not only does it rob someone of their life, it robs them of their faith — faith in God, yes, but also faith in their community.

My rating for “Spotlight”: [usr 8.5] (See my notes at the bottom of this article about the rating scale.)

[Note: if you’re a fan of C.S. Lewis, please check out my new blog Stabs of Joy or my podcast Aslan’s Paw. Both seek to crack open the surprising treasures of Christian belief — the things that Western society has forgotten, ignored, or never encountered — with the help of logic, literature, film, music, and one very unsafe Lion.]