Spotlight.

Tonight, Sue and I went to the pictures to see Spotlight, the new film with Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo.

For those who don’t know the story, it is about the Spotlight investigative journalists of the Boston Globe newspaper and their uncovering of the Catholic Churches cover up of their priests molesting children.

The film pulls no punches and is genuinely uncomfortable viewing as the full scope of the size of the cover up is uncovered and how far the upper echelons of the Catholic Church went to keep it all quiet.

The acting is outstanding, with Mark Ruffalo in particular getting the lion’s share of the meat of the story and his performance is deffinately worthy of the Oscar he has been nominated for. Michael Keaton gets to really show his serious side in this film, playing Robbie, the editor of the Spotlight team and I just love the way he can switch from a lighter tone to exuding quiet menace in an instant.

Also of note is Stanley Tucci, who plays the lawyer representing the victims (called Survivors in the film and you can understand why when you see the mental anguish they went through) who is caught between a rock and a hard place when Mark Ruffalo’s character starts to bring to light what was happening and that the church is watching him.

The film is all the more shocking because it is a true story, Boston is one if not the most Roman Catholic city in America. The priests were the centers of their respective communities and pretty much had open access to the children because the parents couldn’t see they could do anything wrong and if anyone complained, they were paid a visit by the bishop and given a small payout and the priest was quietly moved to a new parish where he could do it all over again.

The final scene in the film is a caption screen, it shows the actual amount of priests involved and uncovered, this is then followed by a list of cities and locations where this had been brought to light because of the actions of the Spotlight team and the Boston Globe. It ran to 4 pages, 2 columns wide and it wasn’t just the USA but UK and Europe too.

My final thought is this.. This is a film that you must go and see, it will make you think certainly, it will make you uncomfortable definately but above all it will probably make you angry. Angry at how it went on for so long and was almost completely ignored by everyone.

Mark.