By James Mottram
One of the standouts in a film full of standouts is the hard-working Mark Ruffalo (Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Begin Again, Now You See Me) who has a work ethic almost as blinding as that of Mike Rezendes, his journalist character in the film, who ploughs on through the investigation even while his marriage starts to splinter. “I spent ten days with him,” says Ruffalo of the real life Rezendes. “That went from working next to him as he was working a big story for The Globe, to just regaling him with questions. It was hours and hours of talking to him. Sometimes I see acting as a reportage endeavour…it’s a journalistic endeavour that involves lots and lots of notes, video, and recording devices. Just like you,” Ruffalo says, waving his hand across the small room of journalists around him. “This is one of those times that I was doing investigative journalism. Mike said to me, ‘Hey, wait a second! You’ve turned the tables on me!’ Mike wasn’t particularly comfortable with that at first,” Ruffalo smiles.
In one scene, we see Mike wolfing down two hot dogs while caught up in the details of the case, too busy to stop for a proper meal, and way too driven to sit down and eat it. Was he really like that? “Totally,” Ruffalo replies. “That’s totally him. He lives a monastic life. It’s very organised, but it’s so simple. I looked in his kitchen, and I don’t think that he’d cooked more than six meals, and he’d been there for ten years. This particular man is completely devoted to his work, and it was clear in every aspect of his life that I could see.”
Did the film change Ruffalo’s perspective of journalism? “Yeah, I got to see it happening,” he replies. “What struck me was the amount of discernment that has to go into what you’re feeding to the public, at this level. And how balanced he was in the way that he could look and listen and investigate. How detached he could be, while at the same time having a passionate hunch about something. The discipline with which they went through material was particularly remarkable. I’d be like, ‘That’s just wrong!’ But they’re building a case, and it’s dispassionate.”
The details of that case were pertinent to Mark Ruffalo, as they were to Tom McCarthy. Like his director, Ruffalo is also from a Catholic background, and he shares something else with McCarthy too. “I’m quite lapsed,” the actor laughs. “Every man’s relationship to some higher power is their own. It’s a personal thing. But it’s interesting how many people carry the essences of those beliefs, even when they’re lapsed. Mike was like that. His whole reason for being is a sense of social justice that he got from early teachings and spending time in the Catholic Church. He got out of it what is essential about it. I was totally Italian Catholic, across the board. First Communion, the whole deal, Sunday school, I went to a Catholic school, and then my father became a Bahai, and my grandmother who lived with us became a Born Again Christian. So in my house, I had Catholicism, modern Christianity, and Bahai faith. It was interesting. It had its hard aspects, but I got an interesting education. I got to see all three cultures from a child’s point of view, which is very clear and unadulterated. I got an objective understanding of all three of them.”
People have certainly been watching Spotlight, which has been getting raves for director, Tom McCarthy, returning him to the kind of critical favour that he received for his first two films, The Station Agent and The Visitor, after his last effort – the whimsical Adam Sandler oddity, The Cobbler – was met with a chorus of boos. “The Cobbler was the first film of mine that was totally beat up,” McCarthy says. “It’s tough. It’s personal. I’m very proud of that movie, and I loved what I tried to do with that movie. Part of what we do is taking chances and mixing it up. I loved working with Adam, and the whole cast. Does it hurt when people don’t love your movie? Yeah, of course. But you learn that you can’t control that. What you have to do is tell the story the best that you can, and then move on.”
And for McCarthy now, that means listening to chatter about Spotlight coming into play in the Oscars race. “My job is to make the movie, tell the story, and hope that an audience connects,” he says. “That stuff can drive you crazy. It’s like the election cycle; it’s big and it’s consuming. I’m excited to see the audience here in Venice. I want to screen it here and I want to screen it in Ireland. Those are the two audiences that I want to sit in and watch the movie with. The audience will be 90% Catholic here,” says McCarthy with a gentle smile, getting ready for what may come…
Spotlight is in cinemas now.
