Initially believing that they are following the story of one priest who was moved to new assignments several times, the Spotlight team begins to uncover a pattern of sexual abuse by other priests in Massachusetts and an ongoing cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. Through Phil Saviano, who heads the victims' rights group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the team is led to widen their search to thirteen priests. Richard Sipe, a former priest who worked to rehabilitate sexually abusive priests, tells them that his studies suggest that there are approximately 90 abusive priests in Boston (6% of priests). Through their research, the team develops a list of 87 names and finds victims to back up their suspicions.
As the team realizes the sheer scale of the investigation, it begins to take a toll on their lives: reporter Matt Carroll learns one of the priest rehabilitation centers is on the same block as his family's home but cannot tell his children or his neighbors to avoid spoiling the story; reporter Sacha Pfeiffer finds herself unable to attend church with her grandmother; Rezendes pushes to get the story out quickly to prevent further abuse; and Robinson faces pushback from some of his close friends who he learns were complicit in covering up the abuse.
When the September 11 attacks occur, the team is forced to de-prioritize the story. They regain momentum when Rezendes learns from Garabedian that there are publicly available documents that confirm Cardinal Law was made aware of the abuse and ignored it. Although Rezendes argues vociferously to run the story immediately, before more victims suffer and rival newspapers publish comparable articles, Robinson steadfastly refuses, arguing the team needs to research further so that the systemic problem can be more fully exposed. After the Globe wins a case to have even more legal documents unsealed that provide evidence of that larger picture, the Spotlight team finally begins to write the story and plans to publish their findings in early 2002.
As they are about to go to print, Robinson admits that he learned during the investigation that he was sent a list of 20 sexually abusive priests by lawyer Eric MacLeish in 1993, on which Robinson never followed up. Baron still commends Robinson and the Spotlight team's efforts to expose the crimes now. The story goes to print with a web link to the documents that expose Law's inaction and a phone number for victims of abusive priests. The next morning, the team is inundated with calls from victims coming forward to tell their stories.
A textual epilogue notes that Law resigned in December 2002 and was eventually promoted to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, and presents a list of 105 U.S. communities and 101 others around the world where major scandals involving abuse by priests have taken place.
The film was written by Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer. When McCarthy was asked how he and his co-author tackled the research and writing process, he said:
As I said, I passed [turned down the film] the first time! That's probably some indication of how intimidating it was. But I think, as always, with any big assignment, once you get over that initial shock and awe of how much material there was to cover, you start digging into the material and become really fascinated by and engaged with it, and we did. And yeah, it was a lot of work, but it was exciting work. It was really interesting work, parsing through details of not just the investigation, but its findings, and trying to determine what was most helpful in telling our story. I think having two brains on it was somewhat helpful too, because we could talk through it a lot. So it wasn't just sitting alone in a room and jotting notes. We were dialoguing a lot about it. That particular collaboration did feel investigative and on some level, seemed to parallel some of the collaboration of the reporters in that investigation. So, I think there was something about our collaboration that made that initial process more palatable on some level.[22]
Development
McCarthy and Singer completed the script in June 2013.[23] It was on the 2013 Black List of unproduced screenplays.[24] Singer told Creative Screenwriting that one of his goals for the film was to highlight the power of journalism, which he feels has been waning. He explained, "This story isn't about exposing the Catholic Church. We were not on some mission to rattle people's faith. In fact, Tom came from a Catholic family. The motive was to tell the story accurately while showing the power of the newsroom—something that's largely disappeared today. This story is important. Journalism is important, and there is a deeper message in the story."[25]
Filming
Principal photography began on September 24, 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts,[26] and continued in October in Hamilton, Ontario. Filming took place at Fenway Park,[27] the then-current Boston Globe offices in Dorchester, Boston,[28] the Boston Public Library,[29] and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.[30] The film's editor Tom McArdle said of the post-production process, "We edited for eight months. We just wanted to keep refining the film. We cut out five scenes plus some segments of other scenes. Often we would just cut out a line or two to make a scene a little tighter."[31] The Boston Police station depicted in the opening scene was filmed in Toronto at the former Toronto Police Service 11 Division station at 209 Mavety Street,[32] and the former Sears building on Islington Avenue in Toronto was converted into a replica of the interior of the old Boston Globe, where the bulk of the filming took place.[33] The brief scene in which Rezendes watches a children's church choir perform "Silent Night" was filmed in St. Basil's Church (Toronto), a Roman Catholic church on the University of Toronto campus.
Historical accuracy
The film depicts only the events leading up to the publication of the Spotlight team's first article, whereas the team continued publishing follow-up reports for nearly two years afterward. As a result, certain events are depicted as having happened earlier than they actually did, including the scene where former priest Ronald H. Paquin freely admits to molesting children and having been molested himself.[34]
While Sacha Pfeiffer did indeed write the numerous follow-up reports on Paquin, the interview depicted in the film was a blend of two interviews conducted by her and Steve Kurkjian, both of which took place about a month after the events in the film. Kurkjian, played in the film by Gene Amoroso, was a founding member of the Spotlight team before becoming the Globe's Washington bureau chief, but rejoined the team after the first story was published to assist with further reporting on the abuses. Pfeiffer and Kurkjian have said that the confession was a much more gradual process and Paquin did not just "blurt it out" the way he does in the film.[34][35]
A scene where Matt Carroll discovers one of the priest treatment centers is down the block from where he lives is based on an actual discovery he made during the investigation, with one minor detail changed: Carroll really lived down the street from John Geoghan, the priest whose case sparked the investigations. This was changed as the filmmakers thought the image of Carroll putting Geoghan's photo on his refrigerator to warn his children would seem unrealistic.[36]
In a subplot, Eric MacLeish claims he sent a list of 20 priests to the Globe in 1993 but the story was buried in Metro: Robinson later admits he was the editor for Metro at the time and he likely overlooked the case. While the Globe did publish an article about the list of 20 priests, the Spotlight team did not learn this during their investigation. MacLeish revealed the article's existence while being interviewed for the screenplay by McCarthy and Singer. This revelation, along with Robinson's response to the filmmakers' inquiry, was incorporated into the screenplay for dramatic purposes.[37]
The film "premiered to sustained applause" at the Venice Film Festival, and the audience "erupted in laughter" when the film reported that following the events in the film Cardinal Bernard Law was reassigned to a senior position of honor in Rome.[9] It had a limited release on November 6, 2015, with its U.S. release scheduled for three weeks later on November 25.[38]
Spotlight grossed $45.1 million in the United States and Canada and $53.2 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $98.3 million, against a production budget of $20 million.[3]The Hollywood Reporter calculated the film made a net profit of up to $10 million.[40]
In the opening weekend of its limited release, the film grossed $295,009 from five theaters ($59,002 average), one of the highest per-screen averages of any release of 2015.[41] The film grossed $4.4 million in the first weekend during its wide release, finishing 8th at the box office.[42]
Spotlight received widespread critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 97% based on 383 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The website's summary of the critical consensus is that "Spotlight gracefully handles the lurid details of its fact-based story while resisting the temptation to lionize its heroes, resulting in a drama that honors the audience as well as its real-life subjects."[43] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 93 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[44]
Variety's Justin Chang called the film "a superbly controlled and engrossingly detailed account of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the widespread pedophilia scandals and subsequent cover-ups within the Catholic Church."[45]Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "To turn a spotlight fittingly on Spotlight, it's the year's best movie so far, and a rarity among countless dramatizations that claim to be based on actual events."[46]
Mark Kermode of The Guardian gave it four out of five stars and praised Ruffalo's performance, writing, "As for Mark Ruffalo, he's the closest thing this ensemble cast has to a star turn, a long-suppressed outburst of emotion providing one of the film's few grandstanding showstoppers."[47]Helen O'Hara of Empire gave the movie four out of five stars and called it a "grown-up film about serious people that mercifully escapes any awards-grabbing platitudes" and "more thrilling than most action movies."[48]
Richard Propes of The Independent Critic gave Spotlight four out of four marks and praised the screenplay and cast: "Spotlight is a nearly perfect example of what happens when the perfect filmmaker works with the perfect script and acquires the perfect cast and crew to bring a story to life".[49]
Comparing Spotlight to The Post, a similar period film about journalists, critic Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com expressed perplexity over critics' muted praise for the latter film, writing that in terms of direction, Spotlight "got praise for doing a tenth of what Steven Spielberg does here".[51][52]
Top ten lists
Spotlight was included on many critics' top-ten lists.[53]
In general, the film was positively received by the Catholic community. Before its release, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of the Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement in the archdiocese's official newspaper, stating that the "media's investigative reporting on the abuse crisis instigated a call for the Church to take responsibility for its failings and to reform itself—to deal with what was shameful and hidden."[54] O'Malley had not seen the movie at that time but planned to do so.[55]
On November 9, 2015, a review in the Catholic News Service called the film a "generally accurate chronicle" of the Boston scandal, but objected to some of the portrayals and the film's view of the Church.[56] On the Catholic News Service, auxiliary bishop of Los AngelesRobert Barron said that it is "not a bad movie", as it shows how the wider community shares the responsibility for sexual abuse committed by priests, but that the film is wrong to insinuate that the Church has not reformed.[57]
Vatican Radio, the official radio service of the Holy See, called it "honest" and "compelling" and said it helped the U.S. Catholic Church "to accept fully the sin, to admit it publicly, and to pay all the consequences."[58] Luca Pellegrini on the Vatican Radio website wrote that the Globe reporters "made themselves examples of their most pure vocation, that of finding the facts, verifying sources, and making themselves—for the good of the community and of a city—paladins of the need for justice."[58][59] In February 2016, a Vatican City commission on clerical sex abuse attended a private screening of the film.[60] Following the film's Best Picture win at the Oscars, Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano ran a column assuring that it is "not an anti-Catholic film", and Vatican Radio revealed that clerics in Rome have been recommending the film to each other.[61][62][63]
Criticism
A January 7, 2016, article in The New York Times cited author David F. Pierre Jr., who said that Spotlight "is a misrepresentation of how the Church dealt with sexual abuse cases", asserting that the movie's biggest flaw was its failure to portray psychologists who had assured Church officials that abusive priests could be safely returned to ministry after undergoing therapy treatments. Open Road Films rebutted the detractor, saying he was "perpetuating a myth in order to distract from real stories of abuse."[64]
The film was attacked by Jack Dunn (played by Gary Galone), the public relations head and a member of the board at Boston College High School, for portraying him as callous and indifferent to the scandal. Dunn says he was immediately aware of the issues involved and worked to respond after viewing the film.[65] Two of the Globe reporters depicted in the film, Walter Robinson and Sacha Pfeiffer, issued a statement in response to Dunn, firmly standing by their recollections of the day, that Dunn did "his best to frame a story in the most favorable way possible for the institution he is representing. That's what Jack did that day." They said Dunn mounted a "spirited public relations defense of Boston College High School during our first sit-down interview at the school in early 2002," the scene in which Dunn is depicted.[66]
On March 15, 2016, Open Road Films released a statement on how Dunn was portrayed in the film: "As is the case with most movies based on historical events, Spotlight contains fictionalized dialogue that was attributed to Mr. Dunn for dramatic effect. We acknowledge that Mr. Dunn was not part of the Archdiocesan cover-up. It is clear from his efforts on behalf of the victims at BC High that he and the filmmakers share a deep, mutual concern for victims of abuse."[67] Dunn then also released a statement: "I feel vindicated by the public statement and relieved to have the record set straight on an issue that has caused me and my family tremendous pain. While it will never erase the horrific experience of being falsely portrayed in an Academy Award-winning film, this public statement enables me to move forward with my reputation and integrity intact."[67]
Spotlight was listed on over 120 critics' and publications' top ten lists.[68]
It was also voted the 88th greatest film since 2000 in an international critics' poll conducted by BBC.[78] In 2018, IndieWire writers ranked its screenplay the 12th best American screenplay of the 21st century, with Kate Erbland saying that the script "ticks along so well, not cutting any corners when it comes to the nitty gritty of real-world reporting, while also finding time to develop its characters and tell a banger of a story. It hits the right beats, but it does so in earned ways, rooted in realism".[79]
^Encarnacao, Jack (November 26, 2015). "Globe reporters defend portrayal of Jack Dunn in movie". Boston Herald. Retrieved November 30, 2015. The scene depicts a fairly common exchange involving reporters who have unpleasant questions to ask and a skilled public relations person doing his best to frame a story in the most favorable way possible for the institution he is representing. That's what Jack did that day.
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