‘Print media is dying,’ the pundits tell us. ‘The age of digital journalism is upon us,’ they say. It is the time of listicles, articles with more GIFs than words, how-to stories and headlines that state ‘you won’t believe what happens next … click here to find out more’. Yes, it is the era of instant gratification, where new breeds of news websites thrive by featuring a click-bait story a minute, leaving the meatier pieces looking increasingly rare.

Perhaps this is why director Tom McCarthy’s biographical drama, Spotlight, smells as delightful as a freshly unrolled crisp Sunday morning newspaper. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and two supporting actor awards, as well as a winner of several prestigious accolades, the film is an ode to old-school investigative journalism.

Spotlight is titled after Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ team; the longest running investigative journalism unit in the United States. The film examines Spotlight’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work where the team unravelled the heartbreakingly widespread cases of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, and the subsequent cover-up which led all the way to the leadership. Spotlight not only shines a light on the systemic misbehavior by these men of cloth, but the painstaking realities of crafting a complicated news story.

Spotlight shines a light on the systemic misbehavior by men of cloth and the painstaking realities of crafting a complicated news story

The theme underscored most heavily by the film is the benefit of hard work in the news room. As we learn, Spotlight’s story took months of collective research, interviews, phone calls, trips to the courthouse, fact-checking, wooing witnesses, exhaustive hours, notepad scribbling and pure doggedness. Along the way, the team’s seasoned and rather straightforward editor, Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton), also had to play politics and employ calculated risks to the annoyance of his own reporters.

Robinson’s biggest gamble was to not pull the trigger on the story when Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) earns a big break and begins to worry that rival newspapers will enter the picture and butcher the fruits of their tough grind. Here, Rezendes insists on updating their superior, Boston Globe editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), but Robinson wants to sit on the story so as to have a chance at bigger targets.

The team also has to deal with the frustrations of circumstances beyond their control. For example, a cataclysmic world event forces Spotlight to temporarily shift focus on to another story, leaving Rezendes and fellow reporter Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) begging contacts to exercise patience.

What makes the storytelling really click is the lack of melodrama. Tom McCarthy’s film affords a quiet growing tension that is built slowly and steadily, unfolding like a fine detective story. For a film that is largely about the toil to be so gripping is exceptional. I also enjoyed the low-key colour palette chosen by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, which appeared as businesslike as a fax machine.

The performances in Spotlight are nothing short of excellent. Some of the standouts are the above mentioned Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams as seasoned journalists somehow holding their nerves while covering the story of their careers. The work by these actors is understated, yet all the more meaningful for it. This is especially true for Keaton and Schreiber, who skillfully convey zeal without resorting to Oscar bait grandstanding. It is subtly powerful acting for a subtly powerful film.

Rated R for language including carnal references

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 14th, 2016