Movie Review - 'The Secret In Their Eyes'

The Secret in Their Eyes Starring Ricardo Darin, Soledad Villamil, and Pablo Rago Directed by Juan José Campanella Rated R

Upon his retirement, Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is still haunted by a brutal murder he investigated 25 years ago, and an unspoken love with his old superior that has lasted just as long haunts him even more. To occupy his time, the former detective attempts to reconcile the two major events of his life in a novel. Before long, his instincts take over and he’s back on the case. As a fellow investigator once told him, a man can change just about anything – his home, his religion, his family – but the one thing he can’t change is his passion. The murder of beautiful Liliana Coloto is one of his passions. It seemed like an open and shut case, but casting a net over the accused killer proved impossible. For a year following the murder, her widowed husband, Morales (Pablo Rago), had been visiting train stations in Buenos Aires assuming the culprit would have to show up some time. Every lead Esposito unearthed evaporated as quickly as it materialized. Holding an even larger place in his heart and mind is Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil). The beautiful, tough, and intelligent lawyer was a world removed from him decades ago, someone he could never approach out of protocol or good sense. But the heart wants what it wants, no matter how much space is created or how much time goes by. From beginning to end, The Secret in Their Eyes holds you in complete suspense. Even though this is a murder mystery at its most basic level, it isn’t the details of the case that always draw you in and it isn’t the sort of manufactured thrills and chills style of execution that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Instead, The Secret in Their Eyes is such an immaculately crafted film that you’re in suspense just waiting to see the next development. Based on the novel by Eduardo Sacheri, director Juan José Campanella’s screenplay creates complete characters, not placeholders for the next dominoes to fall in the plot. The relationship between Esposito and Menéndez Hastings, spanning the whole of these 25 years, avoids the common misstep of movie romance and actually generates undeniable chemistry between the characters, even if they might be powerless to act upon it. The pursuit of Liliana’s murderer works as a potboiler, slowly revealing more details and heading down winding dead end roads, until what can be called the film’s only action scene. A five-minute chase through a crowded futbol stadium begins at the exact halfway point of the film with a sweeping aerial shot of the arena and closes minutes later on the turf, executed without a single visible edit, concluding one of the most impressive uninterrupted sequences this side of Touch of Evil. Campanella’s visual signature here is the symbolic use of color. Whether it’s the bolt of green grass in the stadium against a dark, clear Argentinean night or a yellow dog leash crossing in front of the investigators during a stake out or the subtle hints of red whenever Irene is on screen, there is an accent in nearly every scene that, over the course of two hours, ties all these flourishes together, creating a visual language that supports the story. A final technical note: As translations go, it’s hard to find subtitles that read more succinctly than those in this film. So often, a movie is translated too literally and what you’re reading doesn’t sync with the action or is clumsily structured. In this case, the text perfectly conveys the meaning to an American audience, and it makes a huge difference. Engrossing, smart, and confidently directed, The Secret in Their Eyes won the Foreign Language Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards. How an expanded Best Picture category, featuring nearly half a dozen undeserving nominees, couldn’t find room for a masterpiece like this might be the next big mystery for this film.

Comments

[Greg]

Could you post a list of all the films you gave 5 Damn Dirty Apes to? I'm really looking forward to seeing this one.

[Get The Big Picture]

Give me a day to go through the archives. I know I can get everything since 2001 or 2002, but I'd have to do some digging to go back to '99, which is when it all started.

[Patton]

What an Excellent film! A master piece.
There is a great story, great direction, and impressive acting.
I love the single shoot stadium scene, one of the best ever in the history of cinema. But my favourite is the goodbye scene in the train station, we see millions of times that kind of plot that the idea is a clichè, but in this movie is perfect and functions very well, mostly because of the actors.