best picture awards – The Popcorn Waltz

Dune 2021: Meet Neo With The Good Hair!

Dune 2021 Paul Timothee Chalamet — Paul Atreides of House Atreides, Dune 2021

Fair warning – spoilers ahead! If you’ve not seen Dune, bookmark this page, watch the movie and come back to finish your read.

Adi’s tl;dr Dune’s a spectacle, one that gets better on the second watch. And more so if you go in expecting half the story, for the time of one!

Sahil’s tl;dr Come for the science fiction, stay for the spectacle.

You can see what makes Dune an Oscar contender – a story that’s been nearly impossible to translate to screen, the technical prowess of the movie from Hans Zimmer’s inimitable music to Director and Writer Denis Villeneuve’s vision for the saga. Considered seminal to science fiction, Frank Herbert’s Dune was published in 1965 and is the story of Paul Atreides, the heir to the noble House Atreides surviving political machinations and the destruction of his House on the inhospitable desert planet Arrakis.

Dune is set in a future far, far away where humans have built a society devoid of artificial intelligence – no computers, no phones, no robots. Nothing like the future of humanity envisioned in the Star Treks and Star Wars of the world! The known universe is ruled by a feudal aristocratic empire, where planets are divided among noble houses. The stage is set for a power struggle between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, engineered by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and the Bene Gesserit (a powerful pseudo-religious cult that’s influenced the course of human history for centuries) to weaken the two strongest houses in the empire and eliminate any threats to the emperor’s rule. ‘Spice Melange’ or ‘the Spice’, a substance found only on Arrakis, fuels space travel and lengthens human life making it the most valuable substance in the galaxy, and the currency of power in the world of Dune. House Harkonnen led by Baron Vladmir has controlled the ‘Spice Desert’ for 80 years and the movie starts with the royal decree to transfer the control to Duke Leto, the leader of House Atreides. Leto worries about the political implications of this decision, but is driven by the possibility of economic growth and of forging ties with the underground tribe ‘Fremen’, the free folks of Arrakis who have resisted the emperor’s exploitation of their planet for generations.

And that brings us to Paul and Lady Jessica, his mother and Leto’s partner, who make up the other half of this narrative bringing intrigue to the story that goes beyond politics and ‘Spice’ to matters more mysterious. Lady Jessica is part of the Bene Gesserit and has trained Paul since birth in ways of this secret society of sisters, playing mind games with the mighty men of Dune. The Bene Gesserit have been awaiting ‘the one’, much like Morpheus, just not as cool as him. There’s a growing suspicion that Paul is the fabled ‘Kwisatz Haderach’, the messiah born to guide humanity to a better future. Paul, with his dual training from Leto and Jessica, makes a strong candidate, albeit with ‘Neo-esque’ reluctance and doubt. Through the course of Dune, we see Paul’s growing awareness of his powers, culminating with him setting on a journey to realize his full potential.

Adi’s Take

Dune is the first part of two movies covering half of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel ‘Dune’. And one could argue that was Villeneuve’s true master stroke. The decision to split the story in two likely made the matter more manageable for creators of this epic, presenting an opportunity to do justice to a story that’s been tough to tell. But it does come in the way of fully realizing the potential of this first installment. I was left wanting more in the way of character development and world building, especially the mythology surrounding the universe of Dune and the stories of characters we are asked to get behind. This is one of those times when a pre-read (we watched this intro to Dune on YouTube!) is essential to bring you up to speed. TBH, that’s not usually what I think of as a prerequisite to movie watching!

Still, there’s a lot to love about Villeneuve’s take on this epic sci-fi tale. I’m especially partial to the immersive visuals (incredible desert-scapes, the ship emerging from underwater sequence), the musical score that heightens every scene and the eclectic casting. From Timothée Chalamet’s Paul to Oscar Isaac’s Leto to Jason Momoa’s fiercely loyal Duncan Idaho and Javier Bardem’s no-nonsense Fremen chief, Stilgar – there’s acting talent everywhere you look. But I can’t quite shake off the feeling that they are waiting for something to happen, to fully come into their own, to light up the screen. And this feeling is most acutely felt with Oscar Isaac – the powerhouse that rocked my world in Ex Machina (That dance is LEGENDARY). We are told to believe that Leto is a great ruler, a strategic leader, a warrior who commands undying loyalty but not shown what makes him tick and that’s the challenge with loving Dune in a nutshell. We’re asked to get behind characters, to fear the depths of danger that surround our heroes, to mourn their loss, to be enraged for those betrayed. How I wish we were made to feel this with narrative tools and storytelling, instead. There’s also Zendaya playing the Fremen Chani and Josh Brolin’s Gurney Halleck in the mix, whose presence is felt throughout the movie but we’re left wanting more from both to understand the role they play. One can only hope that there’s more to these characters in the second edition of Dune.

Dune’s also a fascinating take on human evolution – the lack of sentient machinery, the presence of rituals and kingdoms – it’s an interesting dichotomy of the new and the old, when we think about human history. The emotionality displayed by the men of Dune, especially the male bonding of the men of House Atreides, is a positive envisioning of human evolution. They are warriors and politicians, leaders and fathers, but none of those roles have them trapped in societal structures and expectations, inhibiting their ability to express love and loyalty for one another. The greetings between Paul and Duncan Idaho, the tenderness of Leto and Paul’s relationship is a welcome break from tropes of manhood, of toxic masculinity we have come to expect from stories of kings and wars. In one of their few scenes together, Leto and Paul talk about duty and carrying on the family legacy. Leto tells Paul that immaterial of the choices he makes, he’ll ‘always be his son’, he’ll ‘always be enough’, in a refreshing break from stereotypes. Paul’s motivated by a sense of duty to protect his family and House Atreides, and not by a crippling desire to seek his father’s approval, which brings meaning to the choices he makes. I wanted to see more of this character development, to bring the viewer into the world of Dune not just as a spectator enamored by the grand visuals, but making the world relatable at an emotional, human level, despite the eons that separate our realities.

Sahil’s Take

When you think science fiction or fantasy one of the first things that comes to mind is “world building”. Perhaps also Hans Zimmer but more on that later 😉 Dune carries the promise of a world that’ll enthrall, ensnare and entrap you but eventually fails to meet that promise. It does come close in a number of ways.

The movie opens like an epic spectacle, a story of grand proportions, of royal households fighting over a battlefield of a few thousand planets, of an enslaved, hunted, yet guerilla race, of a young savior, the result of hundreds of years of superstition, ritual and science rolled into one. The world that Villeneuve launches along with an ethereal musical score from Hans Zimmer will capture your imagination with its grandeur and scale but it lacks the oral richness you associate with world building. From it’s awe-inspiring cinematography that would look spectacular in a movie theater, to the sharp attention to detail in costumes and set design, Dune merits a couple close watches if you’re taken by the universe. Unfortunately, there isn’t as much dialogue (and I don’t mean exposition) as you’d hope to hear to go along with the visual and musical bounty. Hans Zimmer’s score has the perfect other-worldly, futuristic feel you’d expect from music in the year 10,191 AG / 23,352 AD and creates the ominous sense that chases you throughout the movie. Although oftentimes there’s too much dependence on the music and it’s left to do all the heavy lifting in a scene. The desert cinematography and futuristic feudal setup would remind you of Star Wars, The Mandolorian and Mad Max Fury Road and depending on how other movie(s) in the universe turn out perhaps as big a franchise. There’s always been strong speculation that Star Wars borrowed from the Dune universe and if you’ve seen Star Wars some of those things like a galactic empire or sandworms or a desert planet (Tatooine v Arrakis) would be immediately noticeable as you watch Dune. As to how much Star Wars ‘borrowed’ from Dune depends on your reading of the Dune books and I’ll simply have to take the internet’s word for now!

There are two tribes in Dune worth pointing out – the Bene Gesserit (more a secret society than a tribe) and the Fremen. The Bene Gesserit are a religious sect that operate in the shadows across Dune’s political, religious and social structures, posing to guide the flow of human evolution while the Fremen are the native population of Arrakis who are resisting and fighting a somewhat losing battle over the control of their planet and it’s natural resources. As you see more of these two groups play out in the movie, you can’t help notice the mix of rituals, superstitions, and at times medieval magic-like witchcraft they practice. Both of them operate in the shadows, one from a place of incredible power using subterfuge to guide the course of events in the galaxy and the other who use guerilla tactics and an Avatar-like connection with their arid planet to resist outsiders and protect themselves. A number of these superstitions and rituals, as they often do, culminate in the existence of ‘the one’ or the ‘Kwisatz Haderach’ as the Bene Gesserit know the savior or the ‘Lisan al Gaib’ according to the Fremen. The movie ends with Paul Atreides, becoming the leader or Duke of his House along with the potential Kwisatz Haderach or Lisan al Gaib and joining the Fremen. What you’ll notice as you watch the movie, especially if you do it a second time, is how Frank Herbert used a number of world religions to infuse rituals and language in the Dune universe and Denis Villeneuve does a great job of bringing these alive in the movie, often times in very subtle ways like when you see how the Sardaukar army prepares or the culture of the Fremen.

There are two scenes in the movie that sum up the vision and achievement for me. The spectacle and science fiction comes alive in a scene where a drone silently attacks Paul Atreides. While the murder attempt fails, the scene captures the ominous and poised direction of Denis Villeneuve, Hans Zimmer’s musical score and the richness of the Dune universe. There’s another scene that demonstrates the promise of the movie and how it fails to capitalize on it. As the Bene Gesserit leave after testing Paul with a deadly trial of will to see if he deserves to wield their power, Paul and his mother Lady Jessica have a conversation that’s shrouded in mist. While the cinematography is incredible, as the camera moves from the characters speaking in shadows from afar to zooming in to show a closeup of their faces clearly, the two movements break the enchanting spell the scene tries to cast. A scene with Shakespearean potential is lost due to over engineered effects and technique and not as much focus on dialogue.

We’re left with more questions than answers at the end of Dune – what happened to Josh Brolin / Gurney Halleck, what’s the Bene Gesserit’s endgame, what does Lady Jessica know, was she betrayed by the Bene Gesserit sisters, her kin and community. This is great for the filmmakers who want us on the hook for the second edition, but somewhat frustrating for viewers who have a long wait ahead to see the saga unfold without being as invested in the characters. Dune is part of a small, elite group of sci-fi movies nominated for the ‘Best Picture’ award in the history of Academy Awards. Only time will tell if Dune makes Oscars history by winning this ever elusive category, but we’re not betting on it!

The Popcorn Waltz Rating: 3.4 / 5 aka a must watch, can’t wait for part 2, but not a ‘Best Picture’ winner!

Adi & Sahil

Steve Jobs: So close and yet so far!

Adi’s TL;DR We wrote this post on our MacBooks. Thanks Steve!
Sahil’s TL;DR Steve and I have something in common. We hate the stylus!

Famous, controversial, genius, revolutionary, ferocious, passionate – now isn’t that just the kind of person whom you’d like to put on the silver screen?! Ladies and gentlemen, (welcome to the stage) Steve Jobs! With three-movies made on him between 2013 – 15, perhaps Jobs now also holds the Guinness record for being the person on whom most films have been made in less than five years of his death. Or you could say one real movie after two rather forgettable portrayals :/ Ironically enough, Steve Jobs, the movie bears a striking similarity to Apple, as both were built on the charisma of one individual with help from one helluva supporting cast. With two mainstream Hollywood flicks, both bombing at the box office, it appears this very popular techie and entrepreneur just can’t be successfully brought to life on celluloid.

Here’s some dope on Steve Jobs (not the man, only the movie). With this film, Danny Boyle adds another one to his eclectic list of movies, a ‘near biopic’ on Jobs. Steve Jobs comes after Trance and 127 hours, Boyle’s last two directorial ventures. According to Boyle, the one thing constant in his films is showing stories of characters who ‘are facing impossible odds and overcoming them’. With Jobs, struggles and successes came in abundance, making him a fitting subject for Boyle’s films. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay is based on Walter Isaacson’s biography with the same name. So basically this story is at least twice removed, which might explain some of the discrepancies with the real life of Jobs! The film had a miserable run at Box Office, barely recovering the investment, on a mid scale budget. It just couldn’t win over the audiences, who saw Jobs’s portrayal to be too negative and/or not true.

Despite poor box office performance, the film has received critical acclaim for acting and screenplay, from nominations across SAG, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, BAFTA, all the way to the Academy Awards. Sorkin has consistently won in the adapted screenplay category for Steve Jobs, maybe because of the sheer number of words, but failed to make the cut for the Oscars top 5! With Facebook and Apple off his tech list, guess it’s safe to guess who Sorkin is Googling next 😉 With just two Academy Nominations for Best Actor in a leading role and Best Supporting Actress, Steve Jobs clearly couldn’t impress the Oscars voters as much as other films from 2015 did. And this is a perfect segway to talk about what works in Steve Jobs- Acting.

Our first reaction after watching the film was that it had some incredible performances. There’s copious amounts of dialogue and it’s delivered with utmost conviction. Steve Jobs played by Michael Fassbender is the highlight of the film. Fassbender captures Jobs eccentricities, nuances, habits, style, appearance to a degree that offers his screen presence credibility. The film starts with Fassbender looking anything like the Jobs we remember, but ends with his inimitable mock turtleneck black sweater and blue jeans. In the last act of the film, Fassbender is Steve Jobs in every which way. He captures the man’s obsession, his insanity, his desire for perfection and even his inability to love. Kate Winslet is also spot on in her role as Jobs’s ‘right hand woman’, Joanna Hoffman, his ‘work wife’ as she calls herself and the connection between these two is a thing to watch. She is the only one able to hold her own with Jobs and perhaps the only one he truly respects. Their relationship is one of friendship, loyalty, trust, understanding, things that Jobs (at least in this movie) experiences nowhere else. Between these two they cover majority of the spoken lines in the film!

The supporting cast is also very impressive with Seth Rogen playing Steve Wozniak, Jobs’s friend, cofounder and the brain behind Apple I & II. There are several very powerful scenes between them where you’re shown the tumultuous nature of their relationship. It also highlights how Jobs was the alpha male between the two, while Wozniak was the mind. It’s a love – hate relationship, like most of Jobs’s other relationships. There is one scene where Wozniak tells Jobs, ‘It’s not a binary. You can be decent and gifted’. It’s a rare moment in the film where something strikes home with Jobs and one of the only times where he shows raw emotions because he knows Woz meant it. John Sculley is another one on the long list of strained relationships in Jobs’s life. Jeff Daniels plays this part father figure/part mentor as Apple’s CEO. He’s the one to forewarn Jobs of what’s to come with the failure of Macintosh. John’s a pitiable character in some ways, as his career takes a fall for letting Steve Jobs go, even when it was hardly his doing. There are several scenes where you see Jobs go into the details of his adoption with Sculley and those are the only times you hear about Steve’s parentage. The other interesting character is Andy Hertzfeld, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. Andy and Jobs have some of the most hilarious, intense and tragic scenes in the film. These three emerge almost like the ‘ghosts of christmas past’, with pieces from Jobs’s history that he may not want to remember, but cannot forget. Their conversations before each of the launches, change color, but the tension runs throughout.

The film is shown in three acts, each opening about an hour before a major product launch, where Steve Jobs spends time talking to the same five characters. His head of marketing, Joanna Hoffman, CEO of Apple, John Sculley, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, a member on the Mac team Andy Hertzfeld and his daughter Lisa Brennan Jobs. While clearly this did not happen in real life, for a cinematic experience this is the structure Aaron Sorkin creates. Steve Jobs has a compelling outline, focusing on Jobs’s tumultuous years wrought with failure, rather than picking his major successes (which would’ve been easier!) and showcases him as a sum of his relationships, rather than the genius he’s imagined to be. Sorkin picks up five of Jobs’s relationships that may have moved him the most and shows his evolution through each of these interactions.

This structure created by Sorkin and Boyle, appears to be both a strength and a shortcoming of the film, when you see the final product. While you watch a side to Jobs which is rarely shown, the movie gets caught up in this rather mean portrayal. You don’t see the Apple born in the garage nor do you see the slew of products Jobs launched to make Apple successful again that he is most well known for. You see an attempt to create a ‘more human’ Steve Jobs with his flaws, but unfortunately the film gets lost in this somewhat unidimensional portrayal. With a fair bit of fictionalization, like extending Joanna Hoffman’s role in Steve’s life to eliminating his real wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, Sorkin and Boyle take quite a bit of artistic license (to put it mildly!). In trying to make him ‘human’, we’re shown Jobs as a vengeful, mean, disrespectful, illusionist and trickster who cared for very few around him. You see a couple of brief scenes about the young Steve Jobs and the passion he has but you’re left asking for more since the film simply gleans over that period.

The portrayal of Steve Jobs in the film has earned it a fair amount of flack from the fans of Jobs as well as some of his closest associates including Tim Cook and his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Guess that’s one of the biggest disappointments in the film for us too. With this cast, it was possible to show the many facets of Steve Jobs and not just the terror he was known to be in tech circles. He was the man who revolutionized personal computing and gave the world the most successful, coveted devices and that couldn’t have been possible simply by being a ‘trickster’, an ‘illusionist’. There had to be more to this person. The film sidelines his genius and intelligence to show a selfish, obsessive individual which doesn’t do justice to the complexity of his life or being. And that makes the ending even more hackneyed, where his relationship with his daughter, who he’s hardly shown to parent, is used in a redemptive light. The movie ends with Jobs, reconciling his differences with his daughter, in an over simplified sequence, where all of a sudden he experiences love, humility and concern, none of which he is shown to possess just minutes before.

Here’s the ‘one stand out moment’ for each of us. The first comes in the first act, when there’s a problem right before the launch and the system doesn’t say ‘Hello’. The exchange between Andy Hertzfeld and Steve Jobs is one epic hilarious moment, till it turns dark. Andy tries to reason with Jobs by saying ‘We’re not a pit crew at Daytona. This can’t be fixed in seconds.’ To which Steve responds in the only way he knows, ‘You didn’t have seconds, you had three weeks. The universe was created in a third of that time.’ With the most ingenious quip of all time, Andy says, ‘Well someday you’ll just have to tell us how you did it’. This one’s going in the movie quoters guide for sure! The second one is when in the third act, Jobs meets Sculley and as they shake hands, moving on, in another moment of reconciliation, Jobs says ‘It was the stylus. I killed the Newton because of the stylus. If you’re holding a stylus you can’t use the other five that are attached to your wrist.’ It reminded us of the simplistic design philosophy Jobs upheld and it totally jived with us, since we just don’t get the point of the stylus either! Perhaps this is what led to some of the design ideas for the first iPhone.

This screenplay is undoubtedly better suited for Broadway. All you take away from the film is Steve Jobs as a rather narcissistic individual, Michael Fassbender’s brilliant performance and three acts which mirror each other but show a character’s evolution as the story moves. This is fitting for theatre. Artistic liberty, an individual’s fascination with Jobs’s eccentricities and obsessions make this a somewhat interesting film but not there yet! Celluloid success will perhaps elude Steve Jobs just like real success eluded him for a bit after his first astounding opening at Silicon Valley when he was twenty-four. Steve Jobs is a classic example of a film that had all the right elements, but doesn’t make a lasting impression.

Until next time, keep the popcorn tub handy!
Adi & Sahil
@ThePopCornWaltz

Spotlight: Extended Cut

Thanks for coming over! Here’s the main post, in case you missed it.

Cardinal Bernard Law: A little gift Marty. Think of it as a cardinal’s guide to the city of Boston.

Robby: This is how it happens, isn’t it Pete.
Peter Conley: What’s that?
Robby: A guy leans on a guy and suddenly the whole town just looks the other way.
Peter Conley: Robby, look. Marty Baron is just trying to make his mark. He’ll be here for a couple years and he’s gonna move on. Just like he did in New York and Miami. Where you gonna go?

These are two very interesting sequences in the movie – when Marty meets Cardinal Law for the first time and when Peter who works for Lake Street tries to tell Robby not to print this story. In the second one you can’t mistake the veiled threat Peter makes ‘Where you gonna go?’.’ Robby faces not just ostracism in the town he’s grown up in but also stands to lose all the respect he’s earned. To me though, the first scene appears more threatening than the second one. Take away the collar and the cross from Law and this scene totally reminds me of the ‘new person in town’ who’s been asked to come pay his respects to the local mafia don. The condescension with which Law speaks to Marty, telling him how best to function in the city, giving him a book on the ‘Christian catechisms’ as a guide to Boston is a rather ominous gesture and a warning asking him to not meddle in a place where he doesn’t belong.

Garabedian: Look how they treat their children. Mark my words, Mr. Rezendes, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.

The film has some beautiful dialogues. Without any excess drama, you see a repertoire of impactful lines delivered with impressive acting. The above lines that Mitch says about the whole town hiding this dirty secret is a jolt for Mike in the scene and for us in the audience. Between Liev Schreiber, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James and John Slattery, you see both absolutely spot on acting and lines that leave you speechless. This is one cast, that’s totally outperformed as a sum of their actions! The right lines in the hands of the right actors and director makes for a potent combination.

Language, gestures and tonality are tools preferred rather than over-dramatization. Like Sacha Pfeiffer tells Joe Crowley when she’s interviewing him for the first time, ‘Joe, I think the language here is going to be very important. We can’t sanitize this, just saying molest isn’t enough. People need to know what actually happened.’ This statement is very telling for the film as well as its audiences where you’re told that they’ll explore the events in depth and detail but without becoming either very graphic or sensationalizing the matter.

Sensationalism and over-dramatization are two tropes common to both cinema and to news reporting. Spotlight doesn’t employ either and yet manages to hold your attention every second of the way. Our first reaction when we stepped out of the theatre was how this movie was so totally understated. There is no over-dramatization of what the team of journalists are trying to accomplish in the film, and there is no demonization of the church despite the discoveries they make as they go from one to seventy priests who’ve preyed on kids in Boston.

As someone who loves color, it’s glaring that spotlight is made in monotones. There are only grays and blues and blacks in Spotlight and like the performances even the colors are understated. It’s a limited color palette – maybe to ensure that nothing takes your attention away from the story or distracts you from the dialogue. And there is a lot of dialogue in Spotlight. A lot is being said, but no one’s really talking about the things that matter, in an unspoken code of secrecy.

The movie is like a controlled explosion exercising a lot of restraint on it’s actors to not make this larger than life. We’re shown real people who’re just doing their job, a very thorough one at that. They’re not superheroes or saviors but shown to be as real as any of us which is a testament to the direction by Tom McCarthy.

Spotlight 04

Richard Sipe: The Church is an institution, Mike, made of men. It’s passing. My faith is in the eternal. I try to separate the two.

Faith and religion are different things – faith is what you believe in, it’s internal, inward looking, while religion is an external, social classification. It’s possible to have faith and no religion, but what’s religion without faith. In Spotlight, we’re taken to Boston where religion is a critical determiner of your identity. Faith and religion are no longer separate ideas, where the Church is not just preaching the religion but trying to control people’s faith. The pedestalization of the church is pervasive to a degree that makes it unquestionable and distances it from the very people that the institution was built to serve. And when institutions become gatekeepers, beholders and protectors of religion, there is reason to be scared, because then those institutions assume the power to influence thought and action to benefit their own agendas. Through the movie there are numerous references to the church and its powers. From Ben’s reaction about suing the church, to Garabedian’s assertion that the church controls everything – the church is clearly the seat of power in Boston. There is a also a fair bit of emphasis on each character’s relationship with faith and religion. When Phil Saviano meets the team for the first time, he asks if any of them were catholic, almost assuming that his audience’s religious orientation would determine their extent of understanding his story. It’s interesting that all four of them were raised catholic, but now have their own unique relationship with religion which may not be what the institution demands. The unholy union of abuse and religion, only makes it harder for the victims to grapple with it all. Where do they look for answers, for solace, when they are robbed of their faith, of their spirituality.

Jim Sullivan: You’re right, Robby, we all knew something was going on. So where were you? What took you so long?

The whole village knew and no one did a thing, a guy leans on a guy and the whole town just looks the other way. That’s the story of Spotlight. The undertone of guilt and blame, runs throughout Spotlight and you know there’s more than one to blame. There is no simple black and white, right and wrong, good and evil in the film. Just like real life, most characters are treading the line between right and wrong, living in grey areas. It’s also interesting to see how everyone deals with guilt differently. The church’s rhetoric of doing a ton of good, makes up for a ‘few bad apples’, or Ben’s defensive argument that the story needed Spotlight, or Robby’s introspective guilt of skipping this story when he could have done more years ago – suddenly a light gets turned on, and there’s fair share of blame to go around.

Spotlight is not like a loud, visible, smack across your face, it’s more like a low punch in your gut that hurts. It’s a film that leaves you with a shared burden of guilt, of knowing that we all know of something that ain’t right and we choose to look away. The film makes us feel like we failed at protecting those, that need to be protected. Our shared burden of guilt is the overarching reality of Spotlight. There is no catharsis in Spotlight – it’s simply not structured that way as a narrative and that’s hardly the objective of the story.

Until next time, keep the popcorn tub handy!
Adi & Sahil

A ‘Spotlight’ on 2015’s best film!

Adi’s TL;DR From comic book superheroes to real men… Here’s to growing up!

Sahil’s TL;DR This one is for the ‘classics’ rack on the movie library you’re building!

How many times can you see a movie and still find it riveting? We don’t necessarily know of a scientific way to answer that question, but having seen Spotlight thrice, in about two months, tells me that we’re going to watch this one many, many times. If that’s how you spot a great film, then this one’s surely on that list. Spotlight is intense, it’s evocative, but not provocative. It doesn’t want to rile you up, there isn’t outrage for the sake of outrage. It holds your attention, it holds your thoughts and it constantly reminds you this is for real. The one word that comes to mind when we think about Spotlight is – gripping. It’s gripping cinema, minus any over-the-top drama, emotion or action and that in itself is such a rarity.

Here’s some dope on Spotlight. Directed by Tom McCarthy and written by him and Josh Singer, Spotlight is McCarthy’s fifth directorial outing in Hollywood. And by all means the most successful one. It’s a relatively low budget ($20M, compared to over $100M for The Revenant / The Martian), independent film, with none of the big production companies to back it. Despite that, it has snagged nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and four other categories at the Academy awards this year. This is testament to the brilliance of the film and it’s surely our pick for Best Picture!

Spotlight’s a work of editorial integrity in every sense of the word. The subject of the movie – child abuse by priests, is one that evokes intense emotions, but it’s dealt both sensitively and sensibly in the film. Spotlight is made from the perspective of the team of journalists at The Boston Globe that investigated and published the findings about the systemic nature of this abuse in January 2002, just a few months after 9/11. The two Toms, McCarthy (Director) and McArdle (Editor), ensured that the film’s narrative remained true to the story, understated and tightly knit, with acute clarity of thought and no excesses whatsoever. This makes Spotlight a movie to watch over and over again. The music by Howard Shore complements the intense storytelling and makes the silences more poignant. It’s distinct, paces well with the film, emphasises the highs, the lows, but at no point draws any unnecessary attention, or takes away from the core narrative and that’s so important to ensure you don’t miss a beat in Spotlight.

Spotlight sucks you right in with the opening sequence, where we’re shown a sketchy interaction at a police station in the middle of the night, that you don’t know what to make of. And with that moment the tone of the film is set – you will traverse night and day, dark and light, with the hope that there is some light at the end of this dark, dreary tunnel. In the very next moment, we’re taken to a regular day at a newspaper office. The office banter, the familiar faces, the farewell, the dry humor, the working environment, the cake that some eat and some don’t, provide a backdrop to the film that’s real, believable and mundane. And this realism, runs across the movie, and that’s one of the primary contributors to the intensity of Spotlight. It’s also an introduction to the film’s conversational style and we catch a glimpse of the characters. In one particularly (and rare) funny moment, Robby (played by Michael Keaton) asks his retiring colleague ‘I find the timing of your departure a bit disconcerting. The corner office sits empty, the new editor arrives on Monday, so forgive me, buddy, but I gotta ask… what the hell do you know?’ Now we make sure we laugh extra hard every time we come to this scene, because laughter is a scarce commodity in Spotlight.

It’s a convoluted world in Spotlight, where the ones who hide the truth are the ones who belong, who have an air of righteousness, and the ones who choose to speak out, face the fear of ostracization and are looked at as ‘meddling outsiders’. The city of Boston is as much a character as any other. From ‘The Curse of the Bambino’ that Marty Baron (played by Liev Schreiber) is reading to get a feel of the city, to the constant reminder of how everyone is ‘born and brought up’ in Boston, to Cardinal Law (played by Len Cariou) calling it ‘a small town in many ways’, Boston is the very fabric of the film. Each character is being evaluated in context to their relationship with the city. Either you are ‘them’ or you are ‘us’. Baron is a visual reminder of the outsider in Spotlight and he is at the receiving end of a lot of this sentiment. A jewish man from Miami, who is not married, who does not play baseball, who doesn’t enjoy socializing with the who’s who of Boston is the very definition of an outsider and one that makes everyone uncomfortable. It’s assumed he has an ‘agenda’, partly because he is not from here and partly because of his religion. Tension between the ‘insiders’ and the ‘outsiders’ is omnipresent in Spotlight and those perceived as outsiders are treated with skepticism, with their intentions and agendas being questioned forever. You can’t help but wonder if such rampant abuse could have been kept under wraps, if some of this skepticism was inward looking.

Journalism is not the background in Spotlight, it’s the very action in the film. The film takes you through aisles of paperwork, dingy record rooms, copious note taking, hours and hours of research, lengthy interviews, meeting deadlines – the act of journalism is front and center in Spotlight. You’re taken on this investigative ride along with the characters, where stories criss-cross and you start putting the pieces together. Spotlight has the edginess of a thriller, without the usual tropes associated with one, which adds to the novelty of what’s to come. The tension in the film rises in crescendo and you experience the intensity all along. Doing the right thing, the ethical debate, the political consequences, the readership’s reaction, will it bring about change, is the timing right, what’s the big picture, what if it all blows up in our faces – the movie is rife with all these questions, contradictions and more and you see there are no easy answers. Part of the success of the film lies in the characters navigating this swarm of questions and arriving at answers, that are not simplistic and often incomplete or unsatisfactory, pretty much like real life.

Spotlight reminded us of a text we read, ‘Le Père Goriot’ by Honoré de Balzac as part of our second year paper on French & Russian writing in college. Balzac would focus on minute details for his characters to make them as realistic as possible. Their idiosyncrasies, eccentricities and habits are what separated them from one another making them real (something our professor who taught Balzac pointed out to us). Tom McCarthy applies this style of realism in the film where every character is fleshed out in great detail and are personas you’d meet in real life. You can’t help but notice how McCarthy has used dialogue, body language and tonality to build such well rounded characters. From the soft spoken yet firm Marty Baron to the passionate and driven Mike Rezendes (played by Mark Ruffalo) to the witty and perceptive Robby Robinson, to the voice of reason Sacha Pfeiffer (played by Rachel McAdams), to the nerd who’s writing a horror novel to help him sleep Matt Carroll (played by Brian d’Arcy James), to the cranky Armenian Mitchell Garabedian (played by Stanley Tucci) you’re literally marvelling at how these personalities come to life. Even when the characters aren’t talking, the looks, the gestures speak volumes which is another highlight of the film. Spotlight is replete with moments where looks and body language communicate so much about the person. For instance, when Marty asks Robby ‘Would you consider picking this one’ when he wants the Spotlight team to scrub the ‘Geoghan case’, or the look Matt gives his team when he walks Phil Saviano, a survivor to the bathroom, each shows the details you can highlight as a director, when you have a bevy of fantastic actors to work with.

Here’s the ‘one stand-out moment’ in the film for each of us. Towards the end of the film Marty says ‘Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around in the dark. Suddenly a light gets turned on, and there’s fair share of blame to go around. I can’t speak to what happened before I arrived but all of you have done some very good reporting here, reporting that I believe is going to have an immediate and considerable impact on our readers. For me, this kind of story is why we do this.’ This comes at the moment when the team discovers how they had some pieces to the story earlier but didn’t put it together. There’s fair share of guilt in the room but Marty in his little speech points out how it’s never easy in life to find the big picture but they’ve now managed to right a wrong and are going to present a story that’ll have real impact. The wisdom and maturity in these lines and the humility with which they’re spoken, leave you in awe of the moment.

The second is actually the ending of the film. The last sequence in Spotlight takes us back to where it all started, their office in the basement. As Mike and Robby run in, they find the room abuzz – phones ringing, people talking, taking notes as they hear stories after stories from victims who are contacting the tip line. You can’t miss the shock on their faces. Mike jumps right in to pick up a call, while Robby is seen walking down in a haze. There’s disbelief, wonder, relief – written all over his face. He skips a beat. And he knows this is a once in a lifetime moment – in his life, in the life of a journalist, when something they do makes a difference, makes a real, tangible difference. Maybe there are second chances, maybe you can make it right, at least you can try and try they did. The film leaves you with Robby picking up a call and speaking in the phone, ‘Spotlight’.

A powerful story depicted with ‘horribly good’ realism, backed by fantastic dialogues and acting, make Spotlight the best movie to come out this year, in our opinion. One that you can’t help but stand up and applaud for its gritty storytelling, told without any demonization of the church or glorification of its heroes but with a maturity that’s so refreshing. True story – when we saw the movie for the first time, it received a standing ovation from the entire theatre – something you don’t see happen everyday! So if you haven’t seen this masterpiece just yet, book your tickets or grab a copy as soon as it’s out. This one is for the movie library you’re building!

Until next time, keep the popcorn tub handy!
Adi & Sahil

P.S. We had some more to say about Spotlight (sheepish grin) in the Extended Cut 🙂