Inspriring Integrity In Spotlight Movie

Inspriring Integrity: McCarthy’s Spotlight Writer and Director Tom McCarthy’s 2015 Best Picture Academy Award Winner Spotlight tells the true story of a group of The Boston Globe journalists working to uncover systemic pedophilia within Boston area branches of the Roman Catholic Church in the early 2000s. Within the bowels of The Boston Globe, this group staffed a small and intensely dedicated investigate journalism unit called “Spotlight.” The title, however, also reflects the larger political endeavour of the film: to shine a bright and glaring light on the previously obscure problem of child abuse within the church. The film is unflinching, yet reserved, working much like the journalists it depicts in its expositions of the facts of its story. This essay argues that the true moral in Spotlight, and its true impact as a catalyst of social change, is not in the film’s function as an exposé of sexual abuse, as some might argue. Instead, it is in the film’s argument that the most fitting way to answer systemic corruption and crime is not with melodrama, but calm and credible research and reportage. This is reflected in both the content and style of the film.
Kermode shares in the journalistic diligence of the film and the original spotlight team, sourcing a text wholly new to the discussion: “In his damning 2012 documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Alex Gibney suggested that the Vatican holds records on the abuse of children by priests dating back to the 4th century” (Kermode). The action suggests the success of the film. It has not inspired outrage, just as the actions of the Church inspired little outrage in the Spotlight team. It instead inspires recognition of the pursuit of evidence and information as the true pursuit of justice. Kermode adds himself to the Spotlight team in bringing in new evidence, just as McCarthy has added himself to it by making the