"Spotlight:" The Peak Of Cinematic Journalism

In Tom McCarthy's masterpiece, unmasking a horrifying truth means confronting heartbreaking lies.

June 7, 2023

In 1961, 12-year-old Leslie Turner arrived at St. Aidan’s Roman Catholic Grammar School in Sunderland, a port city in Northeast England. He was barely five feet tall, gap-toothed, bespectacled, and had thin blonde hair cut just above his bushy eyebrows. By any standard, he was innocent.

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One of the teachers, Brother Williams, routinely summoned boys to his office for reading drills. As they recited, he would slide his hand up their shorts and massage their genitals. Unnerved, many boys fumbled their words, which Brother Williams punished with pinching. The abuse was so common that students could do only one thing: pray they weren't next. Turner, for example, recited the “Hail Mary,” hoping God would protect him.

It didn’t work.

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One day, the school’s principal, Brother O’Brien, called him into his office to share his fears that Turner suffered from "sinful thoughts." He forced the boy through an “examination:" he rubbed Turner’s penis, telling him that an erection indicated the presence of sinful thought.

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Turner “failed" the test.

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The subsequent emotions were, in Turner’s words, “conflicting.” He knew something was wrong, that what he endured should never have happened, but something else brewed in the toxic stew of psychological predation and emotional trauma: enjoyment.

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According to England’s National Health Service, the average boy hits puberty at 12, the same as Turner when the abuse began. It is a confusing time, where priorities shift from childhood innocence to the reproductive urges that drive adulthood. Adolescents are emotionally vulnerable and susceptible to influence, fueled by a messy hormonal cocktail: a lack of willpower, desire for acceptance, the urge to “release,” and the inability to understand the implications of such actions. Catholicism's sexual edicts are easily warped and leveraged against impressionable young minds, making its communities hunting grounds for predators.

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Thus, it is not difficult to understand why Turner’s conflict was so corrupting. He was the only child of devout Catholic parents, his education delivered by authorities who represented God. How could a child not blame themselves for denying the divine?

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The abuse ended when O’Brien got transferred. Sadly, Turner's suffering was not over.

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Over the subsequent decades, Turner suffered nightmares, flashbacks, and an eventual diagnosis of PTSD. He told the Irish Christian Brothers, the Catholic order who ran St. Aidan’s, of his abuse. They have paid Turner £17,000 (approximately $22,000) in compensatory damages but refuse to accept responsibility for his torment.

Unfortunately, such stories stretch from the English coast to the heart of the Philippines to the largest city in New England.

On January 6, 2002, following an extensive investigation into claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published an exposé: “Church allowed abuse by priest for years.”

It was a simple statement of fact, as much an unveiling of sordid truth as a testament to the people it affected. It was not the time for colorful language. The truth didn’t need it.

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Trauma can seem isolated inside the walls of a school or church. Such establishments serve a specific purpose for a particular group, so their goings-on feel outside social responsibility.

But what about the grocery stores, parks, theaters, restaurants, even homes? Are they not responsible? What happens when the grocer, the park ranger, the usher, the waiter, and a family care more for shielding the predator than protecting the innocent? What happens when everyone demands suffering gets locked inside to safeguard the collective? What happens when one guy leans on another, and the whole town looks away?

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Spotlight knows the importance of an older cop who knows the Church's capabilities and the younger officer uncorrupted by reality. It knows the sorrow of a young, single mother navigating an impossible situation, stretched too thin and desperate for help. It knows the dread of seeing a high-level official in a revered institution step in to resolve a legal matter.

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It knows all this in its opening scene.

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When it shifts to the office, where staff bid a retiring editor farewell, the tone sets. It is an impersonal goodbye of restrained laughter, general sentiments, and weightless anecdotes that serve the atmosphere more than the subject. Sentiment is not a common practice, so the movie can layer itself by balancing the reporters' feelings and the reality of who they are and what they do.

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Investigative journalism gets impeded by those seeking to hide their iniquity. In a city where the citizens are also responsible, the roadblocks come from within as often as without. It takes a particular person to disavow what you’ve always known to embrace reality. Thankfully, truth is paramount to reporters; they will honor it when confronted.

‍It takes 137 words for Phil Saviano, a survivor of the Archdiocese and its decades-long coverup of child sexual abuse, to relay the initiation, rationalization, and power of abuse. God himself speaks through the priests; his will imposed on every interaction. Every young child's need for validation gets satiated by someone who speaks for God.

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In our minds, each step in grooming is strange in the abstract: a grown man has no cause to share pornography with an adolescent. But for a victim, the process is strange in the specific. They recognize the implications, and from the perspective of a “relationship” that bears significance to the child it could never possess for the adult. Once sexual gratification gets “requested,” whatever conflicted emotions arise are nothing compared to having your faith weaponized against you. Spotlight calls the abuse what it is at the expense of soothing the audience.

Reporter Sacha Pfeiffer meets with Joe Crowley, a survivor, at a small coffee shop. He arrives an hour early, as many of us would, and eases his anxiety by ordering food, as many of us would. As he relays his story to Sacha, he generalizes the trauma with familiar phrasing, as many of us would, but Sacha emphasizes the importance of language. The world needs the truth, and while honesty can be general, the truth never is.

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It reminds us how little perspective we have on children as we contemplate the atrocities they've endured. We lament the abandoned principles of youth, the forgotten magic of childhood corrupted by our enslavement to technology. We say children never get to be children anymore but express outrage over their victimization. All of the articles in the world will not force us to adopt the proper perspective; all they can do is let us look through a keyhole into a massive vault of systemic child sex abuse and hope we care enough to champion the cause after the screen fades to black.

If we are to prevent future suffering and help those we acknowledged too late, we must remember that no matter how far removed from our archaic ideas of youth they seem, children are still children. Spotlight inspires us by forcing us to ponder being a child who suffered more of the world than they ever should have. As the survivors describe, they “jerked off” the priests. They gave them “blowjobs.” The men “put their hands on their dick.”

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These children got molested, abused, and violated, yes. But they also engaged in sexual activity, acts they responded to physically in ways they did not intend. Getting forced to face that in an environment that breeds discomfort and confusion, all to “reach the divine,” is horrifying.

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At the Boston Globe offices, reporter Michael Rezendes sits with survivor Patrick McSorley. He got molested by John Geoghan, the priest whom the Globe ultimately exposes in its initial article. Rezendes wants his story. McSorley tells it.

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He was 12, and his father had just killed himself. No love was lost between father and son, or even son and schizophrenic mother, whom he remembers as a "nutcase," not a mentally ill woman with her own demons. Why should he? He had his own, and still does. One day, Geoghan picked him up and took him for ice cream. On the way home, he reached over and grabbed his penis. McSorley froze.

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“You know I never even finished my ice cream? It just melted down my arm.”

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Rezendes does not comfort Patrick. He doesn't assure him it wasn’t his fault or label Geoghan a monster and McSorley innocent. Without this typicality, Spotlight does what we fail to do: find the empathy to pursue justice and continue that pursuit long after the initial unveiling. We claim care and concern, but over the last 20 years, how often have we riddled movies, television shows, and shop talk with jokes about the Catholic Church, allowing tragedy to become farce?

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The answer retroactively colors the team, a group of ordinary people who are what we fail to be. Spotlight doesn’t let them affect the story as most films would. They are people uncovering the truth one sordid detail at a time, breaking through roadblocks with unshakable force, and consequently questioning all they know. It doesn't get told through theatrics or showy devastation, only facts.

The grass is no greener; the sky is no bluer. The churches do not shine. The moments of resolve do not warm, the times of trial and taxation do not chill. Everything the city is, for good or ill, shows no differently than it would anywhere else under any other circumstances. For all the horror, the story is matter-of-fact. No lighting, contrast, or shadows can change that.

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It makes the casual perspective of the purveyors all the more unnerving, from the lawyers who profited to the Church officials who ignored the abuse and protected its perpetrators.

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Just as every victim processes their abuse differently, scarring their arms with needles or championing the quest for justice, every priest rationalizes his crimes individually. Some are "classical" predators, exploiting God and children's vulnerability for sexual gratification; others defend their actions as the next step in a natural cycle of sexual expression. It is a cycle, the victimization now tragically playing just as much a role as the initial predation.

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But in the end, what we must believe above anything is that the people we classify as evil are not always the sole cause. Pedophiles may be grotesque, predatory, and exploitative. Cardinals may be immoral, self-serving, and unethical. Lawyers may be soulless, smug, and slimy and turn child sex abuse into a “cottage industry."

Regardless, we cannot blame only the abusers, their protectors, or the profiteers. We must also blame ourselves. The team does not dismiss Eric MacLeish’s claim that he sent them a list of names; they investigate the accusation and find the truth, which Robby does not hide. He admits to burying the story nearly a decade prior. His team reassures him, but Robby accepts culpability. If he does, so must we.

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Spotlight does something seemingly impossible given its subject matter; care more for justice than outrage. The fury is conversational, the implications coming to us like we were the investigators.

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The team cannot understand why lawyers kept this secret or contain their shock at Richard Sipe's estimate of 90 predator priests in Boston. We walk side by side with their confusion and the indignance it creates when they resolve it with facts. As they uncover the scandal's enormity, their scope widens. After all, this is a journalism movie, not an outrage piece. It cannot settle as we do, latching onto individuals or singular events to condemn. It wants what we rarely do: true justice. It demands everything and everyone: one priest is not enough; they need the system.

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Spotlight fulfills that need by making nearly every correct choice with integrity few films possess. Its characters develop slowly, affected by each discovery without compromising their professional integrity. It’s in small moments, from Sipe’s reveal to one member’s realization that a predator lives just around the corner. No one weeps, wails, or whines: they realize, contemplate, adjust, and push forward. Eventually, the push consumes. Rezendes snaps at Robby for delaying the story. A tad dramatic, but it feels earned because Rezendes is us.

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On Sasha’s fire escape, he confides that for all his dismissal of the Church, he still hoped that someday he would return and find it waiting for him. He was “holding onto that” like we do, as life disillusions us with what doesn’t add up as it progresses. Our plans don’t pan out, and for reasons that seem unfair. It’s doubtful anyone knows this better than the survivors for whom Rezendes seeks justice, but can he not know it too? Can we not? Spotlight understands that we reject reality because we need it to be good. How many promises must get broken, or things we count on vanish, before we snap?

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The team are genuine people more than they are characters, so every step of theirs is one we must acknowledge we have not taken. Spotlight gives September 11th as a cause for pause but does not exploit it to inspire deeper investment. It balances the severity of Boston’s corruption with the reality that it is just one city in a world of 10,000 cities. If it has everyone within its limits, it has the power too. As such, every country, city, and person has that power. If wielded, one guy can lean on another, and the whole town will look away.

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Spotlight is not just a movie: it is an apology, an ode, and a promise to everyone like Phil Saviano, Joe Crowley, Patrick McSorley, and Leslie Turner. It balances culpability, recognition, allowance, and resolve. It knows indignance cannot undo the past, but sincere effort can safeguard the future. As the film lists 204 cities where scandals have gotten uncovered, we know we must wield that power.

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After all, spotlights shift. The team published 600 articles throughout 2002, but interest waned, and the well dried up. Still, there is much to say, and Spotlight says it more as a documentary on investigative reporting than a narrative film. It tells a story, but a story of uncovering a story. It reveals and realizes itself as the characters reveal and realize the scope of the conspiracy. The more they learn, the more they want to know. Knowing it, however, comes at a cost. Even the purest things are not free. Spotlight understands that the price is worth paying, and in a way few films would ever be willing to understand it. It keeps its spotlight on at all times; with luck, it will force us to leave it on ourselves forever.