Spotlight

[peterbirks]

 It was something of a delight to see that Spotlight had won the Oscar for best picture. This was because I have for quite a while been singing the praises of director Tom McCarthy based on the two of his films (after tonight, three) that I have seen.

Those were Win Win, starring Paul Giamatti, and McCarthy's debut, the absolutely magnificent The Station Agent.

Tonight I watched The Visitor, starring Richard Jenkins, and once again I was struck that McCarthy has a rare director's talent - as with Wes Anderson, no matter what the topic of the movie, there is something indefinably Tom McCarthy about it. Perhaps it's the degree of understatement; or his refusal to pander to stereotypes. 

The Visitor is about a late middle-aged academic suffering from ennui; he hasn't written anything original or taught anything original, indeed, thought anything original, for years. He is forced to head back to New York from Connecticut when the co-author (for which, read, real author - the Jenkins character merely put his name to it to give it gravitas) of a paper goes sick, so Jenkins has to go to a conference to present it.
Turning up at his apartment in New York (academics in the US are clearly better paid than they are in the UK) he finds a couple living there. They have been scammed by a fake landlord.
Jenkins lets the couple stay, and gradually comes alive again. 
But then the husband is picked up by police for jumping a ticket barrier (he didn't) and is discovered to be an "illegal". Jenkins is thrust into an underworld of New York that he has never before seen.
As the critics observed, it would be easy for a director to fall into sentimentality and stereotypical liberal masochism. But somehow he avoids it. In a way, a sad film is uplifting, perhaps because Jenkins is, in a very small way, redeemed. One man, at least, was saved.

Win Win, starring Giamatti, covers somewhat similar psychological ground, but the subject matter is completely different. But the key to the success is that McCarthy somehow gives the viewer hope. Even in a shit world, with imperfect people who sometimes do dishonest things, there is an undercurrent of decency. Through it all, keep the faith, and make the best of the small pluses.
 
Oh, and small minor factoid. McCarthy has also been an actor, and he played the ambitious journalist Scott Templeton in the final series of The Wire - the guy who ends up winning a Pulitzer for a story that was, at base, a fake.