'Spotlight' is an unflinching, urgently needed examination of power and abuse in the church.

“I thought that some day I would come back to my faith. But something cracked,” says Boston Globe reporter Michael Rezendes, played by Mark Ruffalo in the new film Spotlight. For Rezendes, the truth that the Catholic Church covered up untold cases of abuse perpetrated by clergymen is the wrecking ball that decimates his already derelict faith. When you’re raised Catholic, you’re a Catholic for life, whether you believe in God or not. But to see firsthand the Church covering up its own dark sins is to have the very fabric of your soul ripped from you. It’s gut-wrenching and permanent.

Spotlight is a perceptive, unflinching new look at how the Church's power made an entire city complicit in unthinkable crimes. It’s a compulsively watchable, fascinating yarn in the nature of All the President’s Men, and its focus is as shattering as Watergate, perhaps more so, because it hits you on a deeper, more personal level than All the President's Men. We expect our governments to lie to us, to some extent. But, we have naively trusted the Church to be free of deception for far too long. 

The film dramatizes the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team's investigation of the case nearly fifteen years ago. The film is set in 2001, although it opens in 1976, where we see, in hushed voices, somber Church officials begging the mother of an abused child not to say anything against the Church, because the world needs the Church. These "men of God" assure the mother, who's still clinging to this institution as a source of truth, that the pedophile priest will be sent away, that it won’t happen again. But it happened again. And again.

Director Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, zooms in on the investigation, minimizing the personal lives of the main characters. The “Spotlight” team—Michael Rezendes, Robby Robinson, Sacha Pfeiffer, Ben Bradlee, and Matt Carroll—played by Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, and Brian d’Arcy James—are the heroes of the film, if indeed we can call them heroes. As much as Spotlight ultimately maneuvers itself into a pro-journalism stance, this movie isn’t a shameless plug for journalism. The Globe has to reckon with its own demons: It too is complicit in the cover-up by ignoring the case for years, despite the efforts of victims, now grown up, to contact them.

Michael Keaton, who was admittedly very good in last year’s much flashier Birdman, is exceptionally good here as Robby Robinson, the head of “Spotlight”. The performance isn’t flashy at all, and Keaton’s subtlety has its own kind of dramatic weight and import. What humanizes him, and all the other reporters, is their very personal stake in this investigation. Boston is a Catholic town in many ways; the culture is Catholic just as the culture in the South is Evangelical, and this culture affects you no matter your own personal religious beliefs (or unbeliefs). When Robinson confronts administrators at his alma mater, who don't want to investigate allegations of abuse against a priest-faculty member, he tells them about the man, now in his 40s, who was molested by the priest. He was a hockey player, and the priest was the hockey coach. Robinson glibly observes, "I guess we were just lucky we didn't play hockey." It's the kind of shattering remark that needs to be said.

Even as Spotlight rightly brings down the hammer on the abuses, and gives voice to the abused, the film maintains a refreshing graciousness toward belief. All of the “Spotlight” reporters were raised Catholic, and many of them went to Catholic schools. Spotlight reminds us that belief isn’t necessarily the problem. It is, however, the reason many believers are unable to deal honestly at this institution. It’s the power of moneyed institutions cloaked in religious authority, especially when those moneyed institutions can throw their weight around a city, absconding with evidence that damns them, leaning on people to protect the Church “for the good of the city.” When the Cardinal tells Globe editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), “It’s good for the institutions of the city to work together,” Baron responds, “I think for us to do our job we have to work alone.”

Schreiber, it should be noted, gives a fine performance as the Globe’s editor. Schreiber approaches the Marty Baron character with a kind of laconic humility. Baron is always thinking about the bigger story, and he finds moral purpose in bringing systemic corruption to light. McCarthy establishes Baron, a Jew who had previously worked at papers in Miami and New York, as the necessary outsider who sees through the local politics and the mutual good feelings of Bostonians. It’s his sharp focus that enables him to push the “Spotlight” team further, to root out the heart of the scandal.

Spotlight is also an interesting bit of time travel to the not-so-long ago world before the Internet had totally reshaped journalism, before our current, almost total, transition from print to digital. In this way, we see yet another shard of complexity: The “Spotlight” reporters are tasked with finding stories that will sell. (There’s talk of future job cuts, because even then circulation was diminishing.) McCarthy deftly balances the self-serving nature of journalism (you have to find compelling stories to sell papers) with the moral burden of journalism (people need to hear these stories). It may be the best movie of the year; it nothing else, it's one of the most urgent and perceptive films on religion, the press, and power.

With Stanley Tucci, Gene Amoroso, Jamey Sheridan, Paul Guilfoyle, and Billy Crudup.

The Butler

Surely we all know that the words "inspired by a true story" are themselves a kind of fiction when it comes to the movies. And yet many of us take things in movies as though they were courtroom documents, or "as trustworthy as the world almanac," to quote Bette Davis's character in All About Eve. Movies, of course, are master manipulators. That's one of their basic charms, and I generally don't hold their fudging against them in the slightest. But Hollywood's penchant for revising history does mean that viewers have to be able to separate fact from fiction, and it's rather bewildering that some people continue to accept movies as reliable sources. When it comes to details, they usually aren't. They're product designed to elicit emotions from our hearts and minds and money from our wallets. But in terms of getting the mood of a period and having it register in our minds, movies can be quite powerful and accurate. It is in this way that I think The Butler generally succeeds, especially where it lacks in getting certain details right. (This is to say that the screenwriters of The Butler deliberately altered things for their own dramatic purposes; not that they were bad historians.)

The Butler is hugely entertaining for what it is: a big movie with big emotions that tells a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of American public life, looking specifically at the Civil Rights movement and a humble butler who serves seven U.S. presidents. His name in the movie is Cecil Gaines (the real man was named Eugene Allen), and he's played by Forest Whitaker. Whitaker plays Cecil with grace and patience. Enough grace and patience that his son sort of rebels, joining with the ranks of Martin Luther King and then later the Black Panthers because he feels that immediate action--not quiet reserve--is needed to facilitate cultural change.

Just a few mythbusters and then I'll move away from my "based on a true story" rant. Eugene Allen had one son, not two, and his son was neither a civil rights activist like the elder son in the movie nor a Vietnam vet like the younger one. Allen also started working at the Whitehouse earlier than the movie claims (but not as a butler, and not as head butler until 1981, five years before his retirement in 1986, which is one of the few correct claims the movie makes.) One of the most calculating changes that the filmmakers make comes in the son, Louis, who happens to be present during virtually every significant moment in the Civil Rights movement, including the Freedom Riders bus ride through Alabama (the one where they're attacked by a seething mob of KKK and non-KKK racist nutjobs) and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then he even becomes a Black Panther (briefly). It seemed too Forrest Gump-ish to me. (Forrest, you remember, seemed to witness an incredulous number of cultural and historical moments.)

The film very obviously tries to juxtapose Cecil Gaines--who does what is expected of him very well, and considers this a subtle contribution to the march for equality--and his son Louis--who's fed up with being subservient to snooty white racists and wants change. It allows the movie to have some kick to it, even if this kind of plotting feels too convenient. Moreover, the differences between the two men really put Forest Whitaker in the background of his own movie. His is not the face I see as I think about The Butler. I see Louis, I see the cartoonish representations of the U.S. Presidents (from Eisenhower to Reagan, but skipping Ford and Carter), and I see Oprah.  (There is, however, real passion and command inside of Forest Whitaker, and he's able to get some of that out in the second half of the movie.) Given the film's colorful array of characters, it's really an unfair disadvantage.

Those presidents are something else. Robin Williams plays Eisenhower; James Marsden, JFK; Liev Schreiber, LBJ, John Cusack, Nixon; and Alan Rickman, Reagan. (Jane Fonda also makes a cameo appearance as Nancy Reagan.) They're quite an impressive group of actors, and even if their impressions don't always work, they're fascinatingly gauche and/or dead-on. Marsden is surprisingly good as JFK; Rickman really nails Reagan; and Cusack is creepily off-kilter yet somehow right as Nixon. (There's also the added pleasure of seeing LBJ scream at his subjects while on the toilet, with the bathroom door wide open.)

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the performance of Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, Cecil's devoted wife. Oprah's performance is wonderful, and makes you wish she did more movies. Gloria is a boozing but still loving wife, and Oprah's performance brings a lot of humor to the movie that it desperately needs. The Butler isn't a downer (although it's infuriating at times to see how awful black people were treated at this time, and may still be treated today in certain circles), but it is more than a bit self-important. Oprah, who often comes off as self-important when she's giving away free cars to every person in her audience, here appears grounded and real in a way that is vital to the success of this movie. She's also a great balance to the measured, polite character of Cecil. Gloria doesn't care about pleasing people. Yet she's not brash or obnoxious, and her support of her husband is quite touching at times.

Viewers are likely to walk away from The Butler with a sugar-coated lie in their heads. Now that we've got a black president, it's all good. Racism against black people in America is over. (The movie doesn't do anything to counter this.) And what's more, The Butler has spent two hours showing us the general failings of U.S. presidents, only to rejoice in a kind of enchanted, unrealistic way at the election of a black one. President Obama's election was a big deal, of course, in a symbolic way, but the reality of being a president is a lot more complicated and unflattering for anyone who's tasked with the job. (And for the record, it's always been this way. Presidents rarely get something done quickly, for better or worse.) The Butler isn't interested in showing us that. I'm content with the movie as it is, but I worry that some of its sloppiness will eventually be used in classrooms as pure fact.