The Secret in Their Eyes

“El secreto de sus ojos”  (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) is meant to explore the nature of violence, to question the human passion for the destructive, to honor sacrifice in the name of friendship, and to consider the potential for a love that either cuts across socioeconomic class or “freezes in time.” The film does, in one way or another, include all of these motifs, but it presents them in a way that is so cliché and fragmented that their meaning, for the most part, is lost. The themes are not properly developed, in part because there are so many of them, and in part because they are represented in a way that is hopelessly superficial and melodramatic, not to mention pretentious.

“The Secret in Their Eyes,” is the fourth feature-length film by Argentinean director Juan José Campanella. Based on Eduardo Sacheri’s novel “La pregunta de sus ojos” (“The Question in Their Eyes”), the film flits back and forth between 1974 and the present day, as it tells the story of Argentinean formal federal justice agent, Benjamín Espósito  (Ricardo Darín) who is haunted by a 25-year old unsolved crime, as well as the lost opportunities in his love life. Benjamín’s quest for closure is put to the test when he decides to write a novel about the rape and murder case that has been on his mind, leading him to revisit his past in every sense of the word.

The film's cookie-cutter plot set-up may lead one to ask “Will there be redemption for the villains?” and “Will the desperate lovers be reunited once more?” But these questions are not raised or answered in a way that is logical, credible, or intriguing. The scenes drag on, as the storyline needlessly complicates itself further and further. It does not take long for the incessant action to turn into monotony. Viewers are presented with painfully gory scenes set to painfully sentimental music, for painfully long periods of time.  But those scenes make no gesture at self-awareness; instead, the camera takes a step back and gives viewers a lot of time to contemplate the violence, making the scenes tedious, slow, and overwrought.

Many of the scenes look bland, giving the impression that those same shots have already been done before in other films, only better. The style of the film is somewhat reminiscent of episodes of “Law and Order” in the way the camera films investigators walking around a city talking about crime. And indeed, Campanella directed several episodes of the show. Imitating the visual style of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, Campanella frames some shots with dramatic red curtains and varies shots between warm and cold colors, but he does not use the effect consistently. Campanella shows the violent, bloody corpse in long takes set to emotional music in a way that Martin Scorcese had been doing since “Gangs of New York,” brought to a real level of expertise in “Shutter Island.” In these movies Scorcese achieves a conceptual depth that Campanella only aspires to. He does not take all of these influences to create an original, interesting whole. Rather, each influence stands on its own, as a separate component.

At any rate, what the film lacks is inventiveness, as it continuously resorts to clichés. In a recurring image, Campanella shows a woman’s hand on the side of a window of a moving train and, of course, a tear in her eyes as she tries to hold onto her lover’s hand through the glass. The atmosphere is so sappy that one might find oneself wishing she could just fall into the tracks.

The director attempts to imbue the movie with mysteries about love, crime, and human nature, and fails utterly. The real mystery is how this movie ended up snatching any accolades at all, let alone the Oscar for Best Foreign Film earlier this year, and the Goya Prize last year—some of the highest in the industry.