Classic American Narratives, the American Dream, American Cinema and the Responsibility of the Media
Spotlight is the story of a news team called Spotlight, which covers in depth the molestation of underage children in a Boston church.
The appeal of this type of film lies in the collision and empathy between the viewer and the filmmaker in their life experiences and hearts. The process of watching the film is actually a process where the audience expects justice to be done. From the playwright's point of view, it is a process of setting up obstacles and writing about how justice is obstructed. This classic Americanised narrative can be found in any American written playwriting narrative tutorial. It is a cliché but has existed for over a hundred years since the birth of cinema and has conquered generations of viewers.
Americans make films and hold on to their core values under this narrative system, which is universal and always represents the heart of the majority of Americans. It celebrates the most eternal and beautiful human emotions and spiritual experiences: peace, justice, equality, love ...... hence last year's Selma about the black movement leader Luther King, Alzheimer's Still Alice, same-sex affirmative action The Imitation Game, and of course this year's Carol, The Danish Girl and Tangerine . Yet it has its own yardstick: that of never challenging the interests of adult middle-class white males, or the consequence will be a grainy festival run like The Vanishing Lovers.
Spotlight is certainly on the moral high ground, judging a social event that has already been settled, and in which good and evil are clear. But it does so with an introspective gesture, reflecting on the relationship between the media itself, religion and the law, as it investigates the layers of the story.
Good cinema is always concerned with the subtleties of human nature that language can't tell. Spotlight is accurate in its narrative, but it is not brilliant and lacks a touch of spirit. Its attempt to draw on historical events to say something about religious taboos in a culturally diverse society like America is not bold by any stretch of the imagination. But it does, in keeping with American cinema's sense of responsibility, bring more attention to a marginalised group of people who were molested as children by the clergy of the Catholic Church. This is enough for an Oscar nomination, as it recreates how a group of Americans who love their country dearly can hold on to the American dream and make this country more righteous.
