An academic work based on facts, the protagonists of the story are traditional paper journalists... This may sound a bit old-fashioned, but it does not prevent it from being a good movie in my mind.
Some people's efforts in religion and ethics
make the world "lose" a stalk, and some people work hard to "recover" some hidden sins just for the world. The former is a hilarious joke, the latter is a very cruel story.
The latter is a contest about morality presented in Focus.
"Spotlight" is set in Boston on the east coast of the United States during the turn of the century—it's the second Boston-based crime story I've watched recently. The previous one was "Black Mass" starring Johnny Depp, which told the story of Boston gangsters in the 1970s: gang fights, collusion between police and bandits... The routines that can be seen in many similar gangster films.
The reason why "Focus" is more profound than "Black Mass" and touches a certain part of the society is not only because the era of occurrence is closer to today, but also because "Focus" involves the ethical and moral aspects of human society, not to mention the aftermath of the shady scene. , Satan, who violated ethics and molested and sexually abused children was actually the entire Catholic Church.
For a long time, orthodox religion is the caller and defender of human society to raise the standard of ethics, and to build itself into a spiritual teacher of believers while building its own rationality. Catholicism occupies a relatively traditional and conservative position in the Christian world. Boston, on the east coast of the United States, has historically accepted a large number of Irish-based European immigrants (Depp's Winter Hill in "Black Mass" is an Irish gang, and "Focus" also mentioned that the Irish-American judge ruled that the church lost the case. Surprising details), there are so many Catholics, so under the connivance of the church, the victims are widespread and the system is deeply subjugated, which is staggering.
A large number of priests are involved in the crime of molesting and sexually assaulting children. For a society more or less supported by faith, it is tantamount to the self-destruction of the city of ethics. No matter how you measure it, this will be a blockbuster that will set off a huge wave, and the people who expose the full picture of the scandal will undoubtedly hit the church's spiritual power system.
The Uncrowned King
The title of the film "Focus" is also the name of the news team in the story. This is the second Michael Keaton movie I've seen (the last one was last year's Oscar for Best Picture "Birdman") and the second Mark Ruffalo I've seen recently (previous It's "Go Again"). Coincidentally, these two played paranoid workaholics in their respective professions in the above three films.
In the "Focus" they both starred in together, this paranoia belongs to the journalist industry.
In many American movies, we can see highly professional police officers, agents, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen in films with clear themes—or perhaps because of my own preference for watching the subject matter of choice. , scientists, government clerks, and reporters are rare. "Focus" shows several aspects of the professionalization of traditional large-scale print media reporters in this industry.
Around the journalism work of the "Focus" group, the film's narrative is very compact, clear and organized at the same time, so even when watching such a rather documentary story, it will be shaken off step by step. The stronger drama attracted by conflict.
In the face of such a Big Story, and the moral decline that is constantly being lifted from it, the "Focus" team members also revealed that as ordinary people and ordinary reporters, they subconsciously want to grab big news, care about their own family, and be angry, etc.— - This is also the ideal embodiment of the authenticity of the story, and on the basis of personal emotions, supplemented by professional writers and editors, and persistently excavating and displaying the content of the work involved, the absurdity, ugliness, and sin of facts can be displayed in the light. , and eventually resonated with the whole society and promoted the change of the situation.
I personally thought that Mark Ruffalo was the most expressive actor in the film. His fast-paced speech, his habit of curling his lips after speaking, and walking away with his satchel all showed the reporter named Michael Razerendis. Owned a paranoia.
The details that impressed me the most came from journalist Matt Carroll, played by Brian Darcy James. During the investigation, he was stunned to discover that there was a suspected criminal priest in the community where he lived. He hurried across the street in the middle of the night, trotted to the door of the treatment center and looked at it in surprise. When he got home, he hurriedly left a warning on the refrigerator for his children to stay away from the institution. After working for a long time, after the in-depth report of "Focus" was finally published, Carroll threw a stack of newspapers at the door of the community treatment center at the first time of the morning, as if taking a breath, and walked away.
Rachel McAdams also had a good cast, and I didn't get into it just because someone repeatedly portrayed her as my "goddess." I do like McAdams though. :-P
How to see traditional
religion, it is always the most reminiscent of traditional things. Being rigidly conservative and ignorant of innovation is the label that people who have no faith like us put on religion. In the dark Middle Ages, the existence of religious forces did set up many roadblocks that hindered human progress; however, in modern society, after religion faded out of political life, the simple thoughts on ethics and morality contributed a lot to social construction. As the moral guardian of the spiritual world of the majority of believers, the Catholic Church committed unforgivable sins on a large scale and on a large scale in the institutional corruption of the church system in a democratic and legalized country like the United States at the end of the twentieth century. It is really hard not to reflect on how a traditional thing like religion should exist in modern society.
Let's take a look at the "Boston Globe" to which "Focus" is attached, and the print media it represents, which can be called "traditional media" today. It has been almost 20 years since the story told in "Focus". Under the impact of the Internet, the territory of traditional media is getting narrower and narrower, and the possibility of being replaced is mentioned a lot every year. Maybe in a while, we really don't need a newspaper, but who can forget the deep understanding and thinking that such a traditional thing has brought us, a full-page folio in-depth special report printed in black and white Woolen cloth? And what better way to soothe than Matt Carroll tossing newspapers fresh off the printing press at the door of the community therapy center where the bad priest lives?
So tradition does not define good and evil, just like new things. Good and evil depend on how humans use them, and what effect and effect they have. Tradition is not worth blindly advocating for it, just as it does not need blindly rejecting it.
The same goes for the Academy Awards. Such an extremely authoritarian and academic traditional award has been criticized in recent years, but people who pay attention to movies still look forward to it every year. After all, the Oscars also give full recognition to many good movies like "Focus" .
The energy field
Oscar can award this year's best film award to "Focus", probably because "Focus" provides a positive energy factor for the main theme of American democracy and the rule of law. But the film does touch on the world's authority, the Catholic Church, where Hollywood is showing its left-wing side.
I was born in the journalism department of the media department, but I usually sneer at the news environment around me. Since I wrote this article today, I can't help but be suspected of making a cent. But after watching "Focus", I was really proud of the reporter's title of "Uncrowned King". Oops, I'm kidding myself again - I've really never done journalism.
In addition to the news media, there are also survivors, lawyers, sociologists, etc. in the film who still insist on fighting under powerful negative forces. This is a footnote to this society and is also building an energy field that fits the theme of the film.
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