10 Years Later, This Oscar-Winning Film Is Still One of the Best Films Ever Made About Journalism

The 88th Academy Awards in 2016 were frontloaded with an eclectic mix of Best Picture nominees, all worthy of the honor. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant appeared to be the likely winner thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio’s outstanding performance. At the same time, Adam McKay’s The Big Short featured a star-studded cast tackling corporate greed, a theme relevant to the times. When Oscar presenter Morgan Freeman announced Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight as the Best Picture winner, however, it was not just a surprise. It was a loud statement made by an emotionally restrained picture.

As a true-life drama dealing with the controversial subject matter of abuse in the Catholic Church, Spotlight held back its quiet rage through a measured depiction of journalistic integrity. Most seminal dramas dealing with the world of investigative journalism, including Frost/Nixon, She Said, and The Post, tend to wear their heart on their sleeve thematically by showcasing reporters being personally invested in uncovering a major scandal with little nuance. McCarthy took the All the President’s Men approach with the shock and awe factor of an unfolding story, minus the low-key thriller elements. In the ten years since its release in theaters, Spotlight remains one of cinema’s most important tales about truth-seeking by any means necessary.

What Is ‘Spotlight’ About?

In 2001, The Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team, titled “Spotlight,” led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), was approached by the paper’s new managing editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), to look into a story of sexual abuse at the hands of Father John Geoghan. The Catholic priest was under investigation by the Boston Police for the crime 25 years earlier and was not charged after a member of the clergy convinced a victim’s mother not to press charges. Only after victim’s rights attorney Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) broke the story of Boston’s Archbishop (Len Cariou) purposely keeping the abuse claims quiet, does the “Spotlight” team get to the bottom of what happened.

For Robinson and his reporters on the story, including Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sasha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), what begins as a narrow-scoped investigation into Geoghan expands into a much larger scandal of priests being constantly reassigned from parish to parish after accusations are made. They seek out the victims for their accounts as well as get vital information from a therapist (Richard Jenkins), aware of more than 90 accused priests in Boston alone. Soon, the efforts of the reporters not only affect their personal lives but also antagonize the Catholic Church, which seeks to get the story suppressed through lawyers and wealthy benefactors.

McCarthy’s direction in Spotlight dials back any cinematic technique that would otherwise overdramatize the difficult nature of the subject matter. The cinematography is largely documentary-style with muted colors and cluttered spaces in the locations. Additionally, Howard Shore’s typically grand musical style is toned down with a piano and a 10-piece orchestra that never heightens the interpersonal drama but often stresses the urgency of the fact-finding by the Spotlight team. Once those cosmetic layers are peeled away, the film becomes a dry, yet effective, procedural that puts the audience right next to the reporters in their day-to-day tasks, conducting interviews and analyzing the facts through the team meetings.

‘Spotlight’ Is More Urgent Today Than It Was Ten Years Ago

With heavy hitters such as Keaton, Ruffalo, Tucci, and the rest of Spotlight’s incredibly talented ensemble, each actor performs on equal footing without overshadowing one another. No one gets heavy-handed preaching moments, nor does McCarthy try to romanticize their work. The reporting team as a whole functions as one whole protagonist, similar to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman working together as a duo on equal footing in All the President’s Men. Even at a pivotal moment when the team is together in a meeting to piece together all the interviews and court documents to that point, each character bounces off one another with short, overlapping dialogue, contributing their findings. These moments give Spotlight the authentic newsroom life by revealing just how fact-finding requires team cooperation and calculation.

The closest to emotional Spotlight gets is Ruffalo’s Oscar-nominated performance as Michael Rezendes. Early in the film, each character shares their unique stances on the Catholic Church, whether they practice the religion regularly or not. Renzedes, in his own monotone way, makes clear he was raised Catholic but no longer practices. Outside this small character development, Renzendes is a reporter doing everything in his power to hold back any sense of moral responsibility by masking it with a fair approach to the job. But when he reaches his boiling point upon realizing his paper is moving too slowly to get the abuse story out, the reporter speaks passionately not for himself but for every victim of abuse who was denied justice. Ruffalo’s defining moment of anger as Renzendes is not an outburst but speaking for an audience anxious for wrongs to be right.

In the 10 years since its Oscar win, Spotlight opens eyes to a world where the institutions that young people are raised to trust often fail when they turn a blind eye to unspeakable acts. In turn, the film stresses the need for honest journalists to uncover those dark corners of society, potentially to lead to positive reform in those institutions. McCarthy’s Best Picture winner is now needed more than ever at a time when democracy’s last line of defense seems to be getting increasingly compromised by the day.

Spotlight is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.