Tom McCarthy makes reluctant friendship absorbing, and we rate his patient, actor-led films highly. His writing can explain too much or hurry people towards each other, but his best work gives awkwardness time to matter.
Fi1m perspective
In The Station Agent (2003), Peter Dinklage lets a silence last until the friendliness around him starts to feel intrusive. Tom McCarthy gives him time to refuse it. For his first feature as writer-director, he takes Finbar McBride's wish to be left alone seriously, rather than treating it as a fault to be corrected. Dinklage, Cannavale and Clarkson keep the encounters awkward enough to be funny. The pleasure is in watching them get used to one another without requiring everyone to become agreeable.
The writing is not always as patient as the direction. Meetings in The Station Agent can feel arranged, and the warmth is occasionally pressed harder than these actors need. We can see where the friendships are heading a little too clearly, which makes Fin's resistance less interesting.
The Visitor (2007) continued the concern with isolation and unexpected human bonds, while Win Win (2011) turned to small-town moral dilemmas. McCarthy also contributed to the story of Pete Docter's Up (2009). We admire that film's near-silent account of married life, even if the chases struggle to match it; the story credit does not make that passage McCarthy's alone.
With Spotlight (2015), he made the checking of evidence the centre of the drama. McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer make the Boston Globe investigation into Catholic Church child abuse gripping without making the reporters glamorous. We were horrified by the quiet conversations between church and newspaper leaders, because the protection of power seemed so ordinary. McCarthy's sober treatment also makes it uncomfortable to consider the newspaper's own part in leaving abuse unchallenged.
Singer and McCarthy sometimes give a character so much information to deliver that the dialogue becomes a briefing. We feel the script organising its evidence when we ought to be watching a person think. Yet the care over what can be proved supplies tension that a more excitable film might have tried to manufacture. Start with The Station Agent for the company; choose Spotlight if watching a difficult job done carefully sounds like an evening well spent.
Biography
Tom McCarthy is an American actor, screenwriter and director. Born on 7 June 1966 in New Providence, New Jersey, he began his career appearing in films such as Meet the Parents (2000) and television series including The Wire (2002) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999).
McCarthy made his directorial and screenwriting debut with the 2003 film The Station Agent. He later wrote and directed The Visitor (2007), Win Win (2011) and Spotlight (2015). He has also acted in films including Pixels (2015) and Little Fockers (2010), and directed episodes of the series 13 Reasons Why (2017).
