Juan Jose Campanella’s The Secret in Their Eyes is a crime thriller and also a drama film. In this film, Campanella brings back the tumultuous time period of 1970s Argentina. The film has two tracks. On one track, it flows like film noir, but on the other track, it portrays a passionate but unspoken love story. However, those two tracks are not completely parallel but interlinked and sometimes completely merged. The Secret in Their Eyes starts in 1974, pauses for a very long time, and then resumes its journey in 1999. When a country offers a rapist and murderer a free run, an ordinary civilian takes the onus to sentence him. The film has a rare and exceptional climax in the end. The Secret in Their Eyes marks a multidimensional and outstanding piece of filmmaking by Juan Jose Campanella, which is not seen very often nowadays. Amidst a heartfelt love story, the film takes the form of film noir wherein everyone keeps a secret.
In June 1974, an Argentine public prosecutor Benjamin (Ricardo Darin) investigates the horrendous rape and murder of a beautiful woman named Liliana Colotto. This ghastly crime shakes Benjamin and his colleague cum alcoholic friend Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella). Benjamin is much encouraged and supported by his Cornell-educated beautiful and elegant lady boss Irene Menendez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil). Benjamin meets Liliana’s deserted and grief-stricken husband Ricardo (Pablo Rago) and promises him that the culprit will be caught and sentenced to life. Benjamin’s rival Romano frames two innocent workers including a Bolivian immigrant for this rape and murder. However, Benjamin immediately realizes that those two workers have been framed and tortured to confess to the crime. Benjamin blasts Romano with anger. Ricardo shows Benjamin a few old photographs of Liliana that featured her old friend Isidoro Gomez (Javier Godino) staring at her strangely. Being suspicious, Benjamin and Sandoval sneak into Gomez’s mother’s house, and Sandoval steals a few letters Gomez had written to his mother. However, those letters don’t help much with the required information. Senior officials come to know about this activity creating much embarrassment for both Benjamin and Sandoval. The case is decided to be closed.
Recardo’s deep love for his late wife moves Benjamin and he convinces Irene to reopen the case. An acquaintance of Sandoval discovers that Gomez had mentioned the names of a few players of the Racing Football Club in his letters to his mother. Assuming Gomez is a club supporter, Benjamin and Sandoval attend a match between Racing and Huracan to trace Gomez. They trace, chase, and arrest Gomez in the stadium. Benjamin and Irene interrogate him. Irene makes him confess to the crime mocking his masculinity. Gomez is sentenced but Romano bails him out barely after a month. The Peronist Party appoints him to party security service. A frustrated Benjamin tells Ricardo that his beloved late wife will never get justice.
Romano and his team presumably murder Sandoval in Benjamin’s house. He realizes that the assassins must have come to target him, but Sandoval saved him by taking his identity. Deeming Buenos Aires is no longer safe for him, Irene sends him to Jujuy to hide. Benjamin returns to Buenos Aires in 1985 and finds out that Irene is married with 2 children. However, their unspoken but deeply felt love is still very much intact. After his retirement in 1999, he starts writing a novel based on the Liliana rape and murder case. While pursuing the old rape and murder case, Benjamin visits Ricardo’s country house wherein the latter informs him that he had kidnapped and murdered Gomez long back. Benjamin leaves the house but remembers while driving that Ricardo was not satisfied with an easy death for Gomez. He returns through the back door only to find out that Ricardo has kept Gomez in his makeshift jail for the last 25 years without uttering a single word. Utterly shocked and surprised Benjamin leaves Ricardo’s house and visits Sandoval’s grave for the first time to pay a heartfelt and grateful tribute. Then, he visits Irene’s chamber to finally express his unspoken love for her. However, she is well aware of that. She tells him to close the door.
Without naming directly, The Secret in Their Eyes shows the violent regimes of Juan and Isabel Peron in 1970s Argentina. Basic human rights were violated through state-sponsored mechanisms on a grand scale every day. Planned murders and illegal arrests were executed by the Argentine government and military together. There was no end to regular oppression, torture, arrests, detentions, kidnappings, murders, lawlessness, crimes, violence, and overall ruthless subversion of democracy.
Campanella read Eduardo Sacheri’s novel The Question in Their Eyes for the first time in 2005. What moved him immensely was that the novel has a strong flavor of film noir even though the characters are ordinary people who show basic human emotions like love, anger, and revenge. They do not appear as typical noir characters. So, Campanella chose passion as the driving factor of this film. All the characters show their passion on the screen. However, while Ricardo shows a very deep passion for his beloved late wife, Gomez shows perverted passion, which is utterly detrimental to society. Benjamin is impacted by both types of passions. While Ricardo’s passion moves him to trace the criminal come what may, Gomez’s negative or perverted passion torments him to sentence him for life. Sandoval even sacrifices his life for his friend Benjamin. Irene is never able to deny Benjamin’s unspoken heartfelt love for her. Campanella binds the entire film with the thread of passion.
Another important aspect of this film is Benjamin’s effort to pursue this case after a very long period of 25 years. There is no doubt that he was deeply moved by Ricardo’s love for his wife. However, he decides to write a novel based on this case not only for Ricardo’s love for his late wife but because of his guilty feeling as he cowardly escaped from Buenos Aires fearing for his life. His return is because of his intent to redeem himself. The Secret in Their Eyes is a great example of film noir wherein the characters, who are the most ordinary people, keep secrets deep down their hearts and express them through their eyes. Campanella fills the film with a plethora of contrasting emotions like love versus hatred, sacrifice versus revenge, fear versus courage, and crime versus redemption.
The Secret in Their Eyes marks one of the finest forms of filmmaking. Each scene is filled with strong multidimensional amazingly constructed images. Campanella infuses love, crime, sacrifice, commitment, redemption, fear, courage, and revenge in the same film. The film has much more to offer than just its dialogues. It is enriched with expressive images. The screenplay, which is written by Campanella himself and the author of the novel Eduardo Sacheri, is filled with rich and meaningful dialogues. Following the tune of the film, the dialogues too portray the same emotions love, crime, sacrifice, commitment, redemption, fear, courage, and revenge.
The mood and emotions of the film are brilliantly portrayed through Felix Monti’s magnificent and extraordinary cinematography. The five and half minute sequence in the stadium, which starts with an aerial helicopter shot and ends with a chase scene, achieves the highest level of cinematic excellence, and the entire shot appears to be a single shot. The lighting in the interior scenes establishes both film noir and romanticism. Much like the screenplay, composers Federico Jusid and Sebastian Kauderer also use two types of music for the noir and the romantic parts. The more the film progresses, the more the music gets merged. Ricardo Darin as Benjamin is inquisitive, calm, restrained, and expresses emotions through eyes. Soledad Villamil as Irene looks smart, elegant, beautiful, and overall honest. Even though Pablo Sandoval is a secondary character in the film, he is the primary character for his scenes and Guillermo Francella efficiently plays it the same. Pablo Rago as the grieving, revenge-seeking, and beloved husband of the ill-fated Liliana Colotto is brilliant as well. The Secret in Their Eyes won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.