Brittany Harvey has written at LCB in the past. Here she is again with some thoughts on the Oscar-nominated film Spotlight:
Having watched my son
learn to crawl and walk over the last year, I have not seen many movies.
However, I did see Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight
(2015), and I cannot imagine many films, if any, being better. The acting,
writing, directing, the score, etc. are all fantastic. When these things are
good, however, it really just means that a film is a fine specimen of its
craft. And, while Spotlight happens to be well-crafted, it also happens
to be one of those rare movies that remind us why we stare at a big screen
production in the first place. When Spotlight
ends, you wish there were more, though you realize to add any more might spoil
what is already perfect.
Though named after the Boston Globe’s team of investigative
reporters, the film’s title limits the scope of the film. A spotlight only
illuminates a fraction of a stage. A spotlight is, in fact, a well-lit but
condensed space. The word small comes to mind, and, in kind, the film is full
of small words.
In the opening scene, we
see a glimpse of how perpetual abuse and cover up existed within a self-righteous
city. While a priest, guilty of destroying the innocence of a young boy, waits
in a police station to be reassigned to another parish, police tell the victim’s
mother how this will not happen to her son again. Small words. Useless words. Perhaps
it won’t happen to her son again, but it did, and he will live with it the rest
of his life. And it will happen to other sons, and nothing will be done. These criminal
acts are widespread.
Later, in a meeting at
the paper about the release of the story, the reporters realize the paper did
not act on a lead about the numerous priests accused of sexual abuse against
children in the Boston area. This failure to act happened a decade before the
events covered in the film. One of the reporters in the room may actually be
the person responsible for the oversight. Tragically, the agency shining light
on the city’s deeply rooted corruption is partially responsible for that
corruption’s enduring nature. One of the reporters argues that the story could
only have been written in the film’s present, when The Boston Globe’s
investigative team existed to spend so much time on it. “The story needed
Spotlight,” he claims. And, perhaps, this is true. But those small words are
full of a vanity specific to noble causes.
While denying the
victims of Catholic priests their justice, what stories did Spotlight choose to
tell in that decade of denial? Such questions can create a rabbit hole of
worry. After all, what tragedies now might lack the equivalent of Spotlight’s
focus? The double-bind of investigative journalism is that to do the job well
is to not do all the jobs. Not all stories can be told at once. A spotlight is,
after all, quite small.
The film ends with a
listing of all the cities in the world where scandals involving children
sexually abused by priests have been uncovered. This scandal is not small. The
names of these cities contain the whole of human geography. The entire film
takes place in the greater Boston area, but the story is a global one. The film
cites the cities because the list of names is not small, but, indeed, too long
to fathom.
Spotlight has been compared to All the Presidents’ Men
(1976) quite a bit. There are some interesting comparisons to make, but a more
fascinating, and perhaps more telling juxtaposition is with its contemporary, Concussion
(2015).
Directed by Peter
Landesman, Concussion chronicles Dr.
Bennet Omalu’s struggle to unveil the effects of repetitive concussions on NFL
players. As the NFL works to cover up Omalu’s findings, for fear of losing
players and, more importantly, profits, the film enters into the complex layers
of economic and social pressures that surround the professional sports world. Moreover,
the film enters into a discourse on the expectations of masculinity within the
world of professional sports and how those expectations so often render the
strongest men imaginable into victims of societal pressure and institutional
power.
Because these men chose
to play in the NFL, using the same word to describe them and Catholic children
in Boston may seem somewhat insufficient and insensitive to the nature of each
crisis. However, these men were victims, who, in their own way, were unaware of
the game’s consequences. The NFL should have protected them, but, instead,
chose to lie to them about the risks of repetitive concussions.
Eventually, however, the
NFL had to acknowledge the dangers of the game, and, while not perfect, rules
have been changed. Protocol now requires brain injuries to be extensively
monitored. Players are trained to hit and tackle differently. Sadly though, the
reality is that these changes were probably made out of motivation to protect the
game we love as fans more than the players who play the game we love. Either way,
the players are better off, but the sentiment still appears wanting.
In Spotlight, too,
we learn that the system is what we protect, at the cost of our children.
Though the light just barely touches on it in the film, we catch glimpses of a
system that not only covers up atrocities, but perpetuates the conditions which
create them. We see, although limited in scope, how some of the abusers were
once abused, and that even though light has been shone in the darkest of
places, spotlights do not shine everywhere at all times. Cardinal Law resigned,
but remained a Cardinal. He even participated in the 2005 Papal Conclave,
electing Pope Benedict XVI. And really, what has come from the investigative
reporting? While the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had to go before a Congressional
committee for “the shield’s” negligence, who from the church has had to do anything
of the like?
Two movies about two systems. One matters enough to change it, in order to save it and its victims, and another system matters enough to cover up its abuses, ignore its victims, and remain untouched. Dr. Omalu is told in Concussion that he cannot win because the NFL owns a day of the week; the same day the church used to own.
Perhaps the church needs a lesson from the corporation that stole its audience. Maybe the true lesson is that words are small—especially when they are about small victims—but brain cells of big men cannot be ignored forever. And so perhaps what makes Spotlight such a fine example of craft is how it shines a light on its audience. The reporter in that news meeting is not alone in taking some of the blame about what stories are told and not told. His challenge to the paper is a challenge to us. He asks us how we let this happen, how we have not done anything about it. He challenges the other reporters and the audience to stare into the vast darkness, to find the small words in all those untold stories.
Brittany Harvey blogs about parenting at The Uncommon House Wife.
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