SPOTLIGHT

(Tom McCarthy, 2015)

Spotlight has a great real-life story as raw material. It also has an outstanding cast of character actors and movie stars all committing fearlessly to this treatment of that story. What it does not have is a writer-director with any real feel for cinema.
That's not to say there is nothing to recommend in Spotlight; it is an engrossing, beautifully-acted procedural, with plenty of finely-observed details that bring the story and world to life. It's screenplay has some nice moments and a few fine characters.
Previous true-life procedurals like All the Presidents Men and the Insider combined sharp scripts and great actors with bravura direction. It's just that I don't think McCarthy is capable of "bravura". He is fantastic with actors, and this film is really well paced, giving out just enough exposition to keep an audience interested but never enough to slow things down so much that they might become bored.
The story follows a specialist team of reporters at the Boston Globe as they investigate a story of the Catholic Church and it's decade-long cover-up of paedophile priests. Those reporters are played by the likes of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams while Liev Schrieber appears as the new Editor of the Paper, an outsider and Jew, who pushes for the story to the displeasure of most of the city, it seems.
McCarthy shoots it all like it's television. From 1997. Flat, "realistic" lighting, dull blocking and compositions. The camera moves little, and never with any real sense of purpose, either thematic or aesthetic. It feels as if he has learned to direct from a book of How to Direct. Directing: a Fools Guide, perhaps?
It's a shame, because this could and should be an important film about a hugely controversial topic. Instead it is a mediocrity; never bad - its far too tasteful for that -  but never great either.

GOING CLEAR

(Alex Gibney, 2015)

Based on Lawrence Wright's book, Going Clear is a sober portrayal of the Church of Scientology from inception to the present day. That means it is often hilarious, often chilling and generally fascinating. Gibney's usual expository style is in place; mixing talking heads with archive footage and voiceover. The best material is in the first half, which portrays founder and pulp sic-fi writer L Ron Hubbard (LRH to his followers) as a cynical, troubled man who founded a religion because he saw it as the best way to make money and not have to give any away to the IRS. His foibles and sometime monstrous behaviour are part of this portrayal, which is lent credence by the testimony of people who served in his "Sea Org" back then and witnessed him in all his charismatic, cruel glory. His ex-wife's account of their relationship is utterly damning.
The second half shifts to an expose of the state of modern Scientology - run by a paranoid egomaniac, obsessed with enemies and money, and much of this half of the film is made up of interviews with the old members of the leadership of the Church, who now seem horrified about what they have done. Spread across both parts is an explanation of the practices of the religion - the various levels, "auditing", the actual belief in "Xenu" and the thetans. Much of this is delivered in a bemused state of exasperated embarrassment by ex-believers, though Gibney does well to never stoop to outright mockery. The odd cases of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the two most high profile celebrity scientologists, are investigated, as is the organisation's long battle with the IRS to be recognised as an official church, thereby securing non-taxable status.
For all that there is an extraordinary density of material here, it feels a little workaday, especially in the second half, as the church begins to splinter at an executive level, and people explain why they left and what they have realised since. It's hard not to think that this should be more, should hit harder, should hurt it's subject more obviously.