An atmospheric and richly layered police procedural written and directed by Argentinian director Juan Jose Campanella is a welcome relief from Hollywood’s testosterone-driven take on this genre. The investigation is mixed with hints of an unrealized romance, finely drawn personalities, and a realization of the deep horrors that lie hidden within the human spirit. The Secret in Their Eyes won the 2010 Oscar for best foreign language film, beating out recently screened nominees The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) and A Prophet (Un Prophete).
The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) starts out with former federal justice agent Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) revisiting a cold case that has haunted him for years. It is a little more than a whim, though he explains it as a way of filling out his retirement. In fact, it sucks him right back into events of 20 years ago.
The story mixes Esposito’s research for a book he wants to write about the case with flashbacks of the original investigation, and an important theme is that of memory, of how it insinuates itself into our minds, confusing us about the things we thought we knew. Amid the ambiguity of what might actually have happened, director Campanella keeps the story on message, quite a remarkable achievement with such complicated material. Campanella’s experience as a director on TV series such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and House M.D. shows in the film’s tight structure and slick execution, and he manages to pack a huge amount of material into just over two hours. This is crime drama at its best, with the focus firmly on how people think (what they say and how they act, and the disjunction between the two), rather than on crime, or for that matter, justice.
Esposito’s research brings him back into contact with Irene Menendez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil), now a district attorney, but then a newly hired department head trying to establish herself amid the fierce political in-fighting of a corrupt judiciary. In meeting with his former boss, Esposito finds that the spark that existed between him and Hastings has not been totally extinguished, but old barriers of social class and pay grade have been replaced by those of the taint from an investigation that has festered for too many years.
The story is enlivened by the character of Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), Esposito’s clerk, a wily philosopher about human ways and an incorrigible alcoholic. Sandoval, with his mixture of acute perceptiveness and bumbling incompetence, is one of the great police sidekicks of all time, and plays off wonderfully against Esposito’s more polished presence.
While memory plays plenty of tricks on Esposito as he tries to bring the threads of a decades-old case back together again, an unwillingness to forget ravages the soul of Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago), whose wife was the victim of a savage rape and murder. For Morales, forgiveness is an act of betrayal, though the justice he seeks opens the door to a new kind of horror.
There is a strong subtext about coming to terms with past crimes, not least those of Argentina’s various unsavory political regimes, which are hinted at, but kept very much in the background.
The Secret in Their Eyes has mastered the difficult art of the slow burn, drawing the audience deeper into the emotions of the people characters, keeping them off balance, and never allowing them an easy sympathy with “the good guys.” Everyone, good and bad, has secrets hidden behind their eyes, if only you could
see them.
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
During the Japanese colonial era, remote mountain villages were almost exclusively populated by indigenous residents. Deep in the mountains of Chiayi County, however, was a settlement of Hakka families who braved the harsh living conditions and relative isolation to eke out a living processing camphor. As the industry declined, the village’s homes and offices were abandoned one by one, leaving us with a glimpse of a lifestyle that no longer exists. Even today, it takes between four and six hours to walk in to Baisyue Village (白雪村), and the village is so far up in the Chiayi mountains that it’s actually
These days, CJ Chen (陳崇仁) can be found driving a taxi in and around Hualien. As a way to earn a living, it’s not his first choice. He’d rather be taking tourists to the region’s attractions, but after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the region on April 3, demand for driver-guides collapsed. In the eight months since the quake, the number of overseas tourists visiting Hualien has declined by “at least 90 percent, because most of them come for Taroko Gorge, not for the east coast or the East Longitudinal Valley,” he says. Chen estimates the drop in domestic sightseers after the
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
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