Henry Saw: The Secret in Their Eyes

The movie that won Best Forign Film at this years Oscars. It deserved it...


Now I don't know if The Secret in Their Eyes is better than The White Ribbon or Un Prophet, the two films that were favored to win the prize, but I can say that El secreto de sus ojos is a very strong work and highly recommended.

The film opens in modern day Argentina where a man named Benjamín Esposito (Ricardo Darín) is struggling to begin a novel. He wants to write a book based on a murder case he once worked when he was an investigator. Hoping for inspiration on where to start, he goes to visit an old co-worker of his named Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), and the two reminisce about the case that was a pivotal part of both their lives.

25 years earlier Esposito was called to investigate the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman. Along with his brilliant but alcoholic partner Pablo (Guillermo Francella), Benjamin swears to the woman's husband Ricardo (Pablo Rago) that he will find and incarcerate the man who committed the crime, which proves to be difficult even when they know who did it.

The film was directed by Juan José Campanella, a veteran of American TV shows (House, Law and Order), and is expertly put together. Most movies that employ flashbacks, and cutting between the past and present, do it in a cheap manner. It's a technique that can come off as the film-makers taking short-cuts or that they had no idea how to start or end the movie. The Secret in Their Eyes is very tightly constructed and both "eras" of the film feel vital to the narrative.



The film's greatest strength is the acting. Everyone, and I mean every single actor, is fantastic in the film. Darin, who is in his sixties but is able to play a man in his thirties, carries the film. He's not a passive or one-note character as we often get in crime dramas. The film asks him to play angry, determined, disappointed, smitten, and empty. Darin plays every note right. The other real standout was Francella as Pablo. It's a role that feels familiar, the drunken sidekick who pulls himself together for one last case, but Francella puts a lot of realism, weight, and tragedy into the part. Francella is at the heart of one the film's best scenes; Pablo, confronted in a bar by Benjamin, reveals how he has figured out where they can find their primary suspect. It's a great monologue, it focuses on how men cannot change their passions, and Francella delivers it perfectly.

The Secret in Their Eyes is filled with stand out scenes. There is a dazzling chase scene through a football stadium that's done in a single shot. The interrogation scene, which could have felt overly familiar, is as good as the movie demands it must be. It is Soledad Villamil's best scene and I was shocked when I learned that her character Irene is barely in the novel on which the movie is based. Throughout Campanella changes up his style but never in a jarring way. It's not a flashy film, the director trusts his actors to do most of the work, and the movie is better for it. Another strong choice by Campanella is to not ever stray from the main plot and characters. Though it takes place during a tumultuous time in Argentinean history, Campanella just uses that as backdrop and context, and never loses the audience trying to make a grand statement about that time.

The flaws in the film are few but noticeable. The way Benjamin first identifies a suspect, though integral to the film's title and echoed in a nice way later in the film, is quite a stretch. The aging makeup in the film, especially Ricardo's, is also just bad. Distractingly bad. Lastly, the very last scene in the film was strangely anticlimactic. I'm not sure I would have wanted it to be any different, and I'm not sure how it could have been improved, but it ended the movie on a oddly flat note.



The movie this most reminded me of is a Korean film named Memories of Murder. Both films deal with detectives who are haunted by their inability to close a case and how, over time, they begin to question every choice they've made. They are great movies, Secret in Their Eyes has more wit while Memories of Murder has more flying jump kicks, but the Argentinean film gets the edge due to the performances and some remarkable sequences.

A film definitely worth watching. It is possible that this film does not have the artistic aspirations of The White Ribbon or A Prophet, in the end it is just a crime procedural, but there is a lot going on beneath the surface. The exploration of how we deal with loss, the things we decide to fill our life with, and how we can find hope and redemption in others...these themes are all elegantly touched upon. Seek this film out, especially if you're a fan of the genre, but expect to get much more than from your standard murder mystery...

Grade: A

Best Scene: Pablo's speech about passions....