In 2001, The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team is tasked with investigating claims of child molestation and cover-ups by the city’s archdiocese.
Spotlight could have been a very easy, very manipulative movie to make. There is an intrinsic heaviness within the film’s premise and any screenwriter could have exploited that aspect likely to much of the same critical and audience success it has seen since before its Best Picture Oscar win. On the same token it would have also been easy for a screenwriter with a chip on their shoulder about the Catholic Church to write an angry, searing indictment of organized religion and their nefarious institutions. Smartly (and thankfully), screenwriters Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer took the road less traveled and penned a dense and elegant story about the power of the written word.
