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The Secret In Their Eyes
The Secret In Their Eyes
Tue, 7 Sep 2010
Detective story. Romance. Political thriller. Argentinian Juan José Campanella’s Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes is all of these things…and quite possibly more. Our reviewer Trevor Johnston unpicks a great piece of cinematic storytelling which suggests that if you’re skilful enough, you can mix elements from different genres – providing the film’s controlling idea is strong enough to keep everything in check. Spoilers ahead as we ponder passion and morality, Buenos Aires-style…..
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Who’s that girl? The one running behind the train as it pulls out of the station. And who’s that other girl? The dead one…
Before we discover anything else about Ricardo Darín’s protagonist, the first thing to note is that these two women are obviously of major significance to him. He’s a former legal clerk in the state prosecutor’s office now trying to write a novel based on experiences from a quarter of a century ago. Having just retired, he’s at a point where he’s trying to make sense of his life, an interior journey that’s understandably of great significance to him. But how to make it of significance to the audience as well? The approach adopted by Campanella and Eduardo Sacheri in their screen adaptation of the latter’s novel (whose title actually translates as ‘The Question in Their Eyes’), is to base the resolution of this interior journey on the solution to the 1970s murder case which prompted central character Benjamin Esposito to start writing the first place. That’s a smart move in the circumstances, since it effectively refracts character issues into action, suspense and a genre with which the audience feels at home.
What’s remarkable about the film however, is not this interior/exterior congruence per se, but the way that Esposito’s investigation keeps us absorbed by opening out into various other genre-derived story elements, from the key unrequited love story between Benjamin and his patrician female boss (the resplendently-named Irene Menéndez Hastings), to a conspiracy thriller evoking the menacing world of early ’70s Argentinian politics. That’s a lot of diverse material to organise and make dramatically effective, and certainly risky too in terms of keeping so many plates spinning at once. Packing the story like this can be useful since the audience is never stuck for incident or interest, yet without a strong controlling idea it could so easily appear like a ragbag of influences and devices ultimately lacking in a unifying theme. Campanella and Sacheri impress here because it’s evident they know exactly what they’re about – so much so that the underlying theme which is driving the story doesn’t really become apparent to the viewer until the climactic moment of the drama. Just as Benjamin achieves his resolution, we find ours…
Benjamin's boss - The Secret in Their Eyes
That’s all to come however. In the meantime, lets look at some of the methods Campanella and Sacheri use to drive the story forward and bring the various levels of complexity into play in the process.
What’s love got to do with it?
Having established that Benjamin needs to go back into the past before he can move forward in the present, the focus shifts back to the mid-’70s and sets up two different threads. Will Benjamin pluck up the courage to declare his feelings to his boss Irene (Soledad Villamil), with whom he is instantly besotted? Will he also be able to effect justice in the case of the brutal rape and murder of young housewife Liliana (Carla Quevedo)? The telling juxtaposition of love and death exemplifies the way in which the script consistently uses exterior events and other characters as a catalyst for Benjamin’s interior journey. Here, for instance, seeing the battered body of a young woman who had a whole life ahead of her, has enormous impact on Benjamin because it makes him realise he wants with Irene the domestic content her partner Morales (Pablo Rago) had with her – and seeing such happiness cut down only makes the yearning more painful. But if he can’t have Irene, who’s socially way too upscale, and is soon to be engaged, at least he can help bring Liliana’s killer to justice – and indeed try to comprehend what would make any man commit such a hideous act of sexual violence. So, as Benjamin seeks justice and understanding, the script sets up a convincing emotional logic for fusing its interior journey and detective story.
Fight the power
Any tale of sleuthery becomes more dynamic if there’s someone else trying to stop the protagonist from uncovering the truth, and that’s true in this instance too. Enter Romano (Mariano Argento), from a rival prosecutor’s office, who soon has a couple of innocent builders – significantly, they’re from the native underclass – fitted up for the killing. Benjamin’s outrage at this flagrant injustice results in a demotion for Romano, who’s whisked off to the sticks, and while it helps the audience bond with Benjamin, it’s also obviously round one of a set-to which we expect to escalate in the course of the story. Anticipation mounts, but the prime thing here is to set up a conflict that’s key to grasping both Benjamin’s mindset and indeed the political circumstances of Argentina at that time (the increasingly repressive régime of Isabel Perón). Romano and his ilk on the hard right of the ideological spectrum place less weight on justice than on presenting the illusion of effective law enforcement at any cost. While Romano isn’t by any means a rounded characterisation, he’s clearly a representative of the ethos behind the country’s subsequent military junta and so-called ‘Dirty War’, a traumatic period of state-sponsored assassinations, torture and disappearances which continues to cast its shadow over thousands of families still seeking closure for their losses. All of which adds another layer to Benjamin’s story, since his attempt to come to terms with the past is also a marker for the national psyche. This undoubtedly registers more strongly for the film’s home audience (where it’s been a massive hit), but it’s certainly there, and it also underlines that the political aspect of the story is actually integral to a detective tale / love story which might already seem to have enough going on.
Looking for clues
Irene Menéndez Hastings and Ricardo Darín meet their match
None of which brings Liliana’s actual killer to book, so Benjamin’s quest is still very much on. This enables the writers to deliver suspense and action as the protagonist and his loyal, drink-sodden compadre Sandoval (Guillermo Francella, who almost steals the movie) overcome the odds to hunt down the perpetrator. The bravura encounter at a football stadium has been noted by just about every reviewer, but what’s just as resourceful from a writing point of view is how Campanella and Sacheri use the gathering of clues as an opportunity to flag up key ideas which will help the film build towards its climactic revelation of its controlling idea.
An epiphany for Benjamin is when the widowed Morales shows him the photos from Liliana’s time in the provinces, and he spots the longing looks being cast across the images towards her by another man – Gomez, possibly a disappointed suitor. Benjamin knows this look, because it’s how he feels about Irene, and Morales knows it too since it’s a reminder of his life-changing affection for Liliana, a feeling so strong it made him pluck up the courage to speak to her even though he was sure she was way out of his league (which again cannily reflects back on Benjamin and Irene). Since the title of the film seems to refer to this very scene, we know it must be significant, so we hold that thought – there are feelings which make us do things we thought we couldn’t do, feelings we can’t hide….
The breakthrough moment in capturing Gomez the killer comes, of course, via Sandoval’s drunken but astute musing on how a man is defined by his passion. Sandoval drinks because he like drinking, even though he knows he’s destroying his life – thus highlighting the football obsession in Gomez’s letters and leading to the aforementioned spectacular chase sequence. Again we see that what seems merely to be a clue in clearing up the mystery is actually a thematic signpost as well. That’s resourceful writing because it not only reinforces the ideas from the previous Secret in Their Eyes scene, it also gets Benjamin pondering his own passion – he just can’t get away from Irene…
Fight it – fight the power
Campanella and Sacheri develop the romantic tension in the ’70s section of the story by having Irene play her part in bringing Gomez to justice, illustrating shared values between her and Benjamin. We sense that they’re getting closer, to the point where one of them needs to say something – but what’s striking again here is how the script uses the resurgence of an even stronger political antagonist to bring this romance element to crisis point. Romano has been brought back by his cronies in the ruling party, and Gomez has been released by executive order of the President, the ultimate power in the land, since the killer proves useful to the security forces. Benjamin is powerless, but just to rub it in, Romano issues a chilling warning that while Irene’s aristocratic family background makes her untouchable, lower-class functionary Benjamin is not. This threat actually has a triple function, since it not only intensifies the tension, and brings Benjamin and Irene closer to decision time, but it also shows the state willing to overstep the niceties of justice to achieve its political goals. This in turn sets up a parallel in Benjamin’s life: can he overstep conventional class boundaries to achieve romantic fulfilment? One more step towards the film’s eventual revelation of its controlling idea.
In the short-term it nudges Benjamin and Irene into arranging a clandestine rendezvous, before – a great example of another unexpected plot-strand intervening to maximum dramatic effect – Benjamin comes to the rescue of drunken Sandoval, who’s assassinated at Benjamin’s flat, possibly a victim of mistaken identity. In the midst of all this trauma, not only is the date with Irene forgotten, but it even means a reposting for him in a safe provincial backwater. And a poignant moment at the train station, where Benjamin can’t quite summon up the gumption to tell Irene what he means to her. Clearly, he’s still over-awed by all the boundaries which seem to stand in the way of their happiness…
I can see clearly now
The railway station farewell is, of course, what we saw in the opening sequence, and we’ve been waiting since then to make sense of it. This technique of foreshadowing is especially appropriate in a story about memory, about trying to sift through the debris of the past to make sense of it in the present. It helps knit together the narrative in a way which gives confidence in the storyteller and makes the audience feel involved in the story’s detective work. In this instance though, it’s not just a bit of stylish narrative frippery, but yet another thematic signpost too. What wasn’t clear to Benjamin at first, becomes so later when he gathers more information, indicating that memory is a process of working towards understanding, and may prove elusive or misleading along the way. Presumably, this relates in a boarder sense to Argentina’s ongoing coming to terms with its troubled past, but it also signals to the viewer that this is a film which will not reveal itself immediately, and will do so over the longer span of the narrative. If you’re going to keep the audience waiting for enlightenment, it’s important that the narrative flags this up, precisely what’s going on with these tantalising flash-forwards.
Every day I write the book
The railway station farewellNot that the railway station farewell a quarter of a century earlier means it’s all over for Benjamin and Irene. There are a lot of flashbacks in the film, but the writers recognise the need to have the story moving forward in the present (actually sometime around 2000). The various stages of Benjamin trying to impress her with his novel allow this to keep ticking over, and also give cutaway options enabling the time transitions in the ’70s material. There’s a risk though that the present-day events might seem pretty underwhelming compared to all that death and sleuthery decades earlier, so again the writers are careful to give the circa 2000 thread its own powerful narrative trajectory. Benjamin never said what he wanted to say to Irene all those years ago, so can his book now speak for him? Moving from the high emotion of the train station scene to Irene reading Benjamin’s novelised version of it sets up anticipation that she might respond to the coded expression of feeling in its pages, so Benjamin is crestfallen when she’s sceptical that the train station ever happened at all. Thus, the present-day material is beginning to match the flashback scenes in dramatic potency, since her negative reaction spurs Benjamin into the realisation that he’s been living an unresolved life. It’s not enough just to piece together the fragments of the past, it requires action in the present to attain satisfying closure – a notion once more which is also seemingly intended to resonate with the broader span of Argentinian society. And, indeed, which also indicates that neither Benjamin nor the audience are quite there just yet in terms of understanding the thematic significance of his story.
Prisoner of love
Benjamin’s guilt that Sandoval took the bullets obviously intended for him has stayed with him all these years, and the search for answers leads him to track down Morales, who’s been living in a remote rural area. The Morales character has been important throughout not just in terms of his plot function, but because his total devotion to Liliana and his personal quest to find her killer – spending every day at different train stations in the hope of spotting Gomez – reflects on Benjamin’s unexpressed feelings for Irene. Morales has gone the extra mile for his love, whereas Benjamin has not. So, while Benjamin’s visit is on one level about tying up the missing strands in the Sandoval murder story, what he’s really interested in is discovering just how Morales has lived the rest of his life without love? It’s a clear indicator too that Irene has been the love of Benjamin’s life his subsequent failed marriage notwithstanding.
We’ve reached the point then that how Morales answers will seem crucial for Benjamin’s self-perception – will his interior journey end in resignation that life and love have slipped through his fingers, or can Morales spur Benjamin to making something of his future? All the dazzling flashbacks have been working towards this moment of choice in the present.
Morales telling Benjamin that he essentially put the past behind him by killing Gomez himself provides a stern endorsement of the notion that you can’t continue to dwell on bygones – his description of being ‘a man with a thousand pasts and no future’ cuts Benjamin to the bone, since we read it that it means forgetting about Irene.
Can he do so? Everything’s in the balance…
With impeccable timing, the writers bring back Sandoval’s contention that men can never change their passions. This now rings truer than ever for Benjamin because he knows his love for Irene is still burning, and it also tells him that Morales was lying about having moved on. Returning to the farmhouse brings the big reveal – Morales has kept Gomez incarcerated there for decades, enacting his very own version of life imprisonment which the corrupt state had denied him years earlier. In essence he has gone beyond the boundaries of morality to express his love for Liliana in an act of implacable vengeance.
And so we reach the climactic moment of revelation for Benjamin and the audience, as protagonist and viewer grasp the story’s controlling idea: hate ignores moral boundaries to create injustice, but love oversteps the bounds of convention to find truth.
Benjamin now knows he must go further than ever before to win Irene’s heart. It’s a moment which also highlights the crucial significance of the historical/political background in Benjamin’s story, since it’s living in a society ruled by fear which has inhibited him from the belief that other possibilities for the pursuit of happiness are open to him. All of which sets up Benjamin’s chance, at last, to declare his love for Irene. When he arrives in her office however, a look pretty much suffices to get the point across. The secret is in the eyes, after all.
Hints and Tips
If you’re writing a story which is primarily an interior journey, you have to find ways of translating the protagonist’s inner feelings into action – in this case achieved by turning Benjamin’s accounting of his own past into a detective story unravelling the mysteries of a murder case which prompted his self-reassessment in the first place.
When writing an interior journey, the dilemmas and observations of other characters in the story can helpfully illuminate to the protagonist aspects of themselves which can be a catalyst for the central character’s development and prove crucial in terms of moving the story forward.
Writing acquires immersive complexity when the plot developments not only function to keep the story beats ticking over but also flag up thematic ideas which contribute to the viewer’s overall understanding of the story.
When packing a script with lots of dramatic incident unfolding via a series of flashbacks it’s important to bear in mind that the real story is actually going on in the present for the person remembering the past events. Flashbacks can provide the groundwork, but they’re primarily useful to set up a catalytic realisation and/or subsequent dramatic conflict which takes the protagonist forward in the story and ultimately conveys its meaning to the audience.
©Trevor Johnston/The Script Factory 2010
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