| The Secret in Their Eyes | |
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Spanish-language theatrical poster for The Secret in Their Eyes |
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| Directed by | Juan José Campanella |
| Produced by | Juan José Campanella Gerardo Herrero Mariela Besuievski Vanessa Ragone Axel Kuschevatzky |
| Written by | Eduardo Sacheri Juan José Campanella |
| Starring | Ricardo Darín Soledad Villamil Guillermo Francella Pablo Rago Javier Godino Mariano Argento José Luis Gioia |
| Music by | Federico Jusid Emilio Kauderer |
| Cinematography | Félix Monti |
| Editing by | Juan José Campanella |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
| Release date(s) | August 13, 2009 |
| Running time | 127 minutes |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Box office | $33,788,614[1] |
The Secret in Their Eyes (Spanish: El secreto de sus ojos) is a 2009 Argentine crime thriller, directed by Juan José Campanella, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos (The Question in Their Eyes). The film stars Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil in a joint production of Argentine and Spanish companies.[2]
The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to win it twice (having already won for The Official Story in 1985).[3][4] This happened just three weeks after being awarded the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film of 2009 (the Goya Awards are the Spanish equivalent of the American Academy Awards).[5] As of 2010 it has become the second biggest box office success in Argentine film history, only surpassed by Leonardo Favio's 1975 classic Nazareno Cruz y el lobo (Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf).[6][7]
Contents |
When Benjamin's train starts to roll, Irene chases it down the tracks. She's left disconsolate as it leaves the station.
Retiree Benjamin Espósito is having trouble getting started on his first novel. He pays a visit to the offices of Judge Irene Menéndez-Hastings to inform her of his plans to tell the story of the Morales case, one they both worked on when she was his new department chief and he was the federal agent assigned to it. She suggests he start in the beginning.
The beginning is the day a federal agent named Espósito is assigned to the rape and murder of Liliana Coloto, attacked in her home on a pretty June morning in 1974. Espósito promises her widowed husband, Ricardo Morales, that the killer will do life for his crime. His investigation is joined by his alcoholic friend and assistant Pablo Sandoval and the Cornell-educated Hastings. Before they can get started, their rival Romano tries to show them up by having officers beat a confession out of two innocents who worked near the couple's apartment. Espósito has them released and tries to attack Romano in the courts hall.
Back on the case, the agent finds a clue to the murderer's identity in Liliana's photo albums. He notices that the pictures from her home town of Chivilcoy frequently feature a suspicious young man named Isidoro Gómez; his eyes never leave her.
Irene finds this draft of the story unbelievable, since she doesn't agree that an agent can identify a killer by the look in his eyes; Benjamin insists all of a young man's feeling for a woman is spoken there.
Although Gómez was recently in Buenos Aires, he has left both his apartment and employment. Espósito and Sandoval travel to Chivilcoy and sneak into Gómez's mother's house, turning up his letters to her. Sandoval steals them but they contain nothing useful and, when their supervising judge learns of the illegal procedure, the case is closed.
Over an evening review of the manuscript, Benjamin reminds Irene that it was only one week later that she announced her engagement. The memory is poignant, and she decides that she cannot any more revisit the past through his novel.
A year after the case was closed, Espósito runs into Morales, and learns that he maintains daily surveillance at Buenos Aires train stations to catch Gomez passing through. Deeply impressed, Espósito successfully appeals to Hastings to reopen the case. In the end, Sandoval produces the critical insight: he realizes the names in the letters refer to players on Racing Club, a Buenos Aires football club, indicating his fixed "passion" for the team. Therefore, Espósito and Sandoval attend a match for Racing and spot Gómez in the crowd. He slips away when a Racing goal sends the crowd into a frenzy, is pursued through the throbbing stadium and nearly vanishes before he's cornered and chased on to the pitch, captured, and taken in for questioning.
Espósito's largely illegal interrogation is interrupted by Hastings, but when she finds herself looking in the suspect's eyes, she uses her status and sexuality to provoke him with taunts about his masculine inadequacies. It works: he exposes himself and takes a swing at her in the same moment he confesses. Justice seems served.
Late one night, in contemplation over his lost friend Pablo Sandoval, Benjamin gets a call from Irene asking to see the rest of the story.
In 1975, the widower sees his wife's killer on television, included in a security detail for the president of Argentina. Hastings and Espósito quickly establish that Romano, now working for a special government agency, released the murderer to settle the old score, and he insults them both, taunting Espósito for being beneath Hastings. Undeterred, she invites Espósito to offer his objections to her impending marriage plans that night. Before they can meet, however, he has to leave a very intoxicated Sandoval in his living room to run and fetch Sandoval's wife to take him home, but when the two return they find the front door broken and Sandoval inside, shot to death with a submachine gun, apparently by Romano's hitmen. To save his own life, Espósito accepts the isolation of Jujuy Province. Hastings takes him to the train station for a disconsolate goodbye.
The novel complete, Irene shares her satisfaction with the results, although she doesn't believe the scene in the train station. They agree the story lacks the right ending. Benjamin is looking for the answer to a question: "How does one live a life full of nothing?"
With Irene's help, Benjamin locates Ricardo Morales leading a quiet life in a rural area of Buenos Aires Province, and takes his finished book there. Although the widower apparently relinquished his obsession with the murder case already, Benjamin has to ask him how he has lived without the love of his life for 25 years. When Benjamin repeats Pablo's final promise to get Gómez, Ricardo hesitantly confesses that in 1975 he ended Gómez's stalking of Benjamin by kidnapping and shooting him dead.
A disturbed Benjamin starts the drive back to the city, distracted by something that doesn't seem right. Impulsively, he pulls over, leaves his car by the side of the road, and stealthily returns to Ricardo's property. He follows Ricardo into a small building set near the main house, where he is shocked to find Gómez living in a makeshift cell, undetectable from the outside. Gómez plaintively asks Benjamin to request Ricardo to talk to him. Ricardo reminds Benjamin of his promise that Gómez would never go free.
Benjamin pays his respects at Pablo's grave, then goes to see Irene with an evident sense of purpose. She notices something different in his eyes, reminds him that it will be complicated, and asks him to close the door.
Campanella returned from the United States, where he had directed some episodes of the television series House and Law & Order, to film The Secret in Their Eyes. It marked his fourth collaboration with actor-friend Ricardo Darín, who had previously starred in all three of Campanella’s Argentine-produced films in the lead role. Frequent collaborator Eduardo Blanco, however, is not featured in the movie; the part of Darín’s character’s friend is played instead by comedian Guillermo Francella.[8]
The Secret in Their Eyes is a joint production by Argentine and Spanish companies.[2] Amongst its technical challenges were creating the appropriate ambiance for Argentina in the mid 1970s, and one particular continuous five minute long take (designed by the VFX supervisor Rodrigo S. Tomasso), that encompasses an entire stadium with a live football match going on inside. From a standard aerial overview we approach the stadium, dive in, cross the field between the players mid-match and find the protagonist in the crowd, then take a circular move around him and follow as he shuffles through the stands until he finds the suspect, only to conclude with a feverish stop-and-go chase on foot through the murky rooms and corridors under the stands, finally ending in the lights in the middle of the pitch. The scene was filmed in the stadium of football club Huracán, and took three months of pre-production, three days of shooting and nine months of postproduction. Two hundred extras took part in the shooting, but visual effects were used in order to show a fully packed stadium with nearly fifty thousand fans.[9][10][11][12]
The Secret in Their Eyes received very positive reviews from critics, not only in Argentina,[13][14] but also in countries like the United States; it holds a 92% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus being: "Unpredictable and rich with symbolism, this Argentinian murder mystery lives up to its Oscar with an engrossing plot, Juan Jose Campanella's assured direction, and mesmerizing performances from its cast". On the website Metacritic it holds a score of 81/100, meaning "Universal acclaim", based on 33 critic reviews.
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