Truth (15)
three stars
Dir: James Vanderbilt
With: Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford
Runtime: 125 minutes
BOTH Truth and Spotlight, which won the best picture Oscar on Sunday, are tales about journalism based on true stories - the first is about a probe into George W Bush’s military history, the second concerns child abuse in the Church and its cover-up.
Both pictures feature big names - Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett in Truth, and Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, and Stanley Tucci in Spotlight.
So why does one movie come away with the movie equivalent of a Pulitzer while the other is deserving of a downpage mention only?
Much of it is to do with story rather than stars. In the Blanchett-Redford film the audience is asked to care about process - how the CBS 60 Minutes programme went about uncovering details about Dubya and how it later justified its story when they were challenged. If you find such stuff as double sourcing, edits, and journalistic ethics fascinating, Truth is for you.
Spotlight, in contrast, never loses sight of the fact that the Boston Globe’s investigation had real people at its heart. What is happening on screen mattered. What happened to CBS producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather (played by Blanchett and Rather) mattered too, but not to so many people, and most of them were in the media. Decent enough performances from Blanchett and Redford aside, Truth feels like ancient history with a heavy whiff of worthiness about it.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here