456 - The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina, 2009. Dir. Juan Jose Campanella.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

456 - The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina, 2009.  Dir. Juan Jose Campanella.

What a rich and beautiful film.

From early on, one feels the power of a taut and intelligent script, the world-class cinematography of Felix Monti, lighting by gaffer Daniel Hermo, editing by the director himself, a gripping score by composer Federico Jusid, and Oscar-worthy acting by both the leads and supporting characters.

When was the last time you watched a movie where you were taken by the overs (over-the-shoulder shots)?  Seriously.  The filmmakers understand composition.  They know their art history.  Long before we get to the five-minute tour-de-force oner (one-take shot) that swoops down from the skies onto and into a soccer stadium--including visits to the pitch, the stands, the tunnels, and the bathrooms--we have already been captivated by beautifully composed shots on a tripod.  Interspersed with just the right amount of movement on a jib or rig.

After a two-and-a-half minute dream-like sequence on a train platform--which we learn later is a flashback to twenty-five years ago--we get a low-angle long shot in deep focus with a single-point vanishing point moving left to right--with a red lamp lighting dark wood in the foreground and a green banker's lamp and fluorescent built-in as practicals near our protagonist in the detailed background.  The ceiling light is off.  HMIs are coming through the mini blinds, but softly, without beams, and another hard light is hitting him camera-left on his right arm and lower-right cheek.

One feels the influence of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and van Eyck, in lighting, contrast, color scheme, and detail.  One also feels the influence of Citizen Kane's split projection.  Something excellent is going on here.

The film will maintain this tone throughout.  Deep darks.  Soft, sometimes bright, specifically placed lights.  Rich colors.  Fine details.  Smooth skin tones.

And speaking of skin tones, because the characters age at least twenty-six years over the course of the film (beginning in time at least one year before the twenty-five year flashback), one cannot help but pay attention to the detailed work of hair stylist Osvaldo Esperon, make-up artist Lucila Robirosa, and their rather large department of assistants.  The characters get younger as well as older, going back to Irene Menendez's first day on the job and moving on past Benjamin Esposito's retirement.  Their hair thins as well as grays, and their skin wrinkles, beginning around their eyes and expanding throughout their faces.

The film is about Benjamin Esposito's novel, which he has begun writing after having retired from government detective work; about the story on which his novel is based, featuring the lives of his new boss, Irene Menendez, partner Pablo Sandoval, rival judge Romano, deceased victim Liliana Coloto, her husband Ricardo Morales, and suspect Isidoro Gomez; and about the true-life love between Esposito and Menendez.

Everything revolves around the Liliana Coloto case.

Ricardo Morales loves Liliana for life.

He loves her so much that when someone brutally rapes and murders her, he spends the next year of his life, every day after work and all weekend long, sitting at train stations looking for the suspect to walk by.  So that he can help capture him.

Benjamin Esposito is also taken with the case.  He visits Morales at his home and is given access to their pictures.  He studies the pictures carefully, patiently.  He believes the secret lies in people's eyes.  That rapists and murderers are often people the victim knows, and that if he can look at enough pictures and see into the eyes of enough people, he will identify the suspect.

He does.

And he does.

We do not know at first if he is right, and we watch as he goes out on a limb, taking his alcoholic partner with him to Chivilicoy, to the home of the suspected suspect, breaking in when the mother steps out, and his partner's stealing of letters that might have otherwise been usable as evidence.

Someone local sees his Peugot parked.  Reports it.  They look up the license plate.  Connect it to him.  Report it to his boss's boss.  He is castigated.  The case is closed.

This after it had already been closed once before.  When rival detective Romano arrested two neighborhood laborers and beat confessions out of them.  To get the case off his plate.  To get his men.  To advance his career.

One wonders how many people Romano has done this to.  And how many Romanos are out there.

Esposito believes in real justice.  Finding the real perpetrator.  Getting to the real truth.  Therefore, he and Romano do not get along.

Esposito is now skating on thin ice.

But do not count him out yet.  And do not overlook his alcoholic partner Pablo Sandoval.

For Sandoval delivers the philosophy that turns the whole case.

And that ultimately changes Esposito's life forever.  In some ways now.  In other ways twenty-five years from now.

Sandoval looks at his own life.  He loves to drink.  No matter what else happens, it is his passion.  He decides that a person may change in almost every other way.  But not in his one true passion.  However else one changes, he will always go back to his passion.  Whether it be alcohol or soccer or vengeance or love.

Esposito uses this to crack the case.  Find the suspect.  Break the suspect.  And later discover what happened to the suspect.

And go after the love of his life.

One's passion will never change anyway, so why not go back to it twenty-five years later?

There is much to say about this film.

Go watch it.

It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 2010.  It also won the Goya for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film.  And it swept the Argentinian Academy Awards, winning in 11 of 14 categories.  In a couple of those cases people from this movie were competing against each other, and only one of them could win.

Campanella made movies in Argentina in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Then he moved to Hollywood and started directing television.  While there doing that, he went back to Argentina to make this movie.  Then he came back to Hollywood to direct more television.  We would love to see him do more work in features.  Because he is so good at it.  On this film he is writer, producer, director, and editor.

And yes, we said it has taut script.  Even with a forty-minute denouement.  For even after the case seems solved, there are more twists and turns to go.

And even after the case really is solved, there is more love to go.

Because, as Campanella himself says, the detective story is the trigger.  He even calls it the MacGuffin.

While the love story is the real story.

The love Morales has for Liliana.

The love Esposito has for Menendez.

The love each of them has in return.

We know they have this love.  This secret.

We can see it in their eyes.