Heartfelt review - Spotlight

Once in a while comes a story that is not only hard hitting but also sends an uncomfortable sensation all over your body as you watch it. This is not because of graphic content in the video or expletive language in the dialogues. It is just the subject. The subject is so normal it is a part of our life. And then one day you realize you’ve been a part of a well cultivated lie all your life. It is like how a child one day discovers that he is actually adopted. It is like the lamb who discovers it doesn’t belong to the pack of wolves it has been growing with. Spotlight deals with something like this. It is a revelation that challenges a status quo and exposes the dirty linen.

Spotlight is a paper that has larger ambitions but is very much a local paper. The movie starts with a farewell party of one of their editors where, as these things go, a lot of humor is doled out. The serious effort at humor ends there. The movie is racy and it takes you on an intense run which will wear you down by the time the movie is over. Michael Keaton heads the investigative journalists team of Spotlight that brings out great stories but at a leisurely pace. Liev Schreiber comes on to take the editor’s role and they are forced to take up a story that’s both controversial and comes with stringent timelines. The story challenges the well-established system called the Church and the team which consists of Rachel Mcadams, Mark Ruffalo and Brian d’Arcy James go about unraveling the story. They start at first skeptically and as the movie progresses, Tom Mccarthy, the director, beautifully brings out the change in all of these characters. They are now leading a crusade with every bit of their own personal life invested in it. The stellar Stanley Tucci plays Mitchel Garabedian a lawyer who is the first spark of this crusade. The review would be incomplete if I didn’t mention his excellent contribution.

What the movie does splendidly is to stick to the investigative part of the drama. The temptation is definitely there to take this story to a level of heart melting tearjerker. But Mccarthy makes his actors portray a stoic expression most of the times where they suffer with the reality they discover silently. We understand that only by looking at the knitting of their eyebrows. Keaton is excellent as the leader of the team. He seems to have walked into this set straight from that scene in Birdman where he starts running naked across the road. Mark Ruffalo is allowed the rare outburst in the movie and he does a great job of looking both goofy and persistent at the other times. Rachel Mccadams sheds all the glamour and wears ill-fitting pants and goes about comforting victims in what can only be called motherly. I really loved Liev Schreiber’s character. He is the epitome of a mild guy who has the might of a mountain but is impeccable in his behavior. He delivers the shortest pep talk ever, at the end of this movie.

This movie has all the makings of a popular movie which will rise and shine due to its notoriety. These are the same reasons why it might get ignored at the Oscars. As audience we should be thrilled we have Spotlight.