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existed between him and Hastings has not been totally extinguished, but old barriers of social class and pay grade have been replaced by those of the taint from an investigation that has festered for too many years.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.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
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The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su