‘People need the church more than ever right now’.
That’s what a lawyer tells a journalist from the Boston Globe in 2001, as the newspaper’s four-person investigative team, Spotlight, is in the mire of pursuing a story which would later win them a Pulitzer Prize.
What begins as a small reference to a case of the Catholic Church settling out of court with the family of a child abused by a priest snowballs into a year-long campaign in the Tom McCarthy directed film Spotlight, retelling the events, which was released in the UK at the end of January.
Undermining the institution
Implicit in the statement that Eric MacLeish (Billy Crudup) makes to Spotlight editor Robby (Michael Keaton) is that to criticise the Catholic Church would be to cut into people’s trust of the institution, the decades-long accepted authority the Church has in all matters. The Spotlight team, all lapsed Catholics but committed Bostonians, are forced to the margins of city life as they dig and push to have the truth told. Because, as McCarthy says of the film, ‘getting people talking is the only thing that’s going to cause change’.
The driving force behind this story being told by the Spotlight team is Marty Baron, the newly arrived editor. An outsider who’d moved from Florida, Baron quietly but firmly insists on the Spotlight team persevering with their investigations even in the face of criticism and in doing so teaches these Bostonians how to see their city clearly, status quo pushing at the of treating the Church as untouchable. ‘You want to sue the Church?’ is the immediate and repeated response when the Globe files a motion to make public some documents relating to abuse cases. It takes an outsider to question the culture, the accepted way of doing things, for the good of those who are inside it and cannot see clearly for themselves.
Thirteen guilty priests
Details begin to emerge. The Spotlight team have evidence enough to work on the basis that as many as 13 priests in the Boston archdiocese are guilty. A medical expert they consult describes it as being so widespread that it’s a ‘recognisable psychiatric phenomenon’. In a cramped office filled with reams of paper and files, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) persuades lawyer Mitch Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), who is representing dozens of victims in an effort to bring about real justice, to share his experiences of doing so. Robby and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) attempt the same with Eric, responsible for arranging settlements between victims and the Church, only they meet him in his skyscraper offices, three of them seated around a table that could host 30.
There is money and comfort available to those who protect the Church and play by its rules. The picture builds. The systemic nature of the issue is revealed, and Baron urges the team to go after the whole institution, not just the individuals involved.
The temporary aesthetic of municipal housing, as well as sturdy, grand old townhouses, feel small and cowering against the backdrop of large grey-stoned churches, looming behind the public life of the people of Boston. As Sacha traipses from home to home interviewing tens of victims of abuse by Catholic priests, we hear church bells toll, see children play in parks set at the doors of churches, and we come to understand that to be Bostonian is to be loyal to the authority of the Catholic Church.
‘This is our town – we must protect it.’
To most people the Spotlight team meet, to protect Boston is synonymous with protecting the Church, no matter what. Robby contends that to protect Boston is to fight for justice for even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant people.
Their investigation, along with Mitch’s resolute commitment to fight for justice against all odds, brings out the individual, personal stories of the victims they’re discovering – people who can’t alone speak loud enough to be heard against the great silencing powers the Church has been executing, unquestioned, for decades. The Spotlight team care for the least, and in doing so, are an antidote to the evil being done. This awareness of evil slowly and steadily builds as they realise this issue isn’t merely historical, but that it is continuing even as they gather information for their article.
A truer church?
We get one short glimpse into how this affects the journalists, as the evil they’re uncovering hunches in onto their shoulders. They carry it, having compassion on the victims and committing themselves to telling their story. They rage against the injustice by being willing to carry the awful weight of truth and by having the courage to break from the norm in order to challenge it, being pushed to the margins, losing friends and being mocked for doing so. They fill the void the institution of the Church has created and are, to those victims, a truer church.
