“I remember so many beginnings, but I don’t know which one goes with this story.”
— Benjamin Esposito, El secreto de sus ojos
Unlike the lead character in the film the Liberian Girl and I saw on Sunday night, I do know which beginning goes with this story. It occurred last Friday and the scene starred familiar castmates scotch and Mr. Jared Wade (who may be known to some as Lights Out).
I had been dispatched to Newark, NJ to work a conference on behalf of my daytime employer. After the conference’s Friday proceedings concluded, I PATHed it to midtown Manhattan to connect with Lights Out at a bar that had an excellent selection of scotchy scotch scotch. The night ended pretty late. Saturday morning began quite early. About two hours separated that ending from that beginning.
The Saturday proceedings of my conference concluded late that evening. But not late enough to prevent me from sneaking into a Prince versus Michael Jackson party in SOHO where I met a painter who explained his theory on how the vibrations of the Purple’s music differed from the vibrations produced by the Bad’s catalog. The painter caught me studying a young woman’s undulating hips from afar. He was studying them, too. They oscillated slowly to a Prince song anticipating the man who was bringing her another drink. They were hungry hips. The painter claimed we should thank Prince for inciting the scene.
The Purple, he postulated, vibrated in a way that inspired the urge to engage in the intimacies exchanged between adults (and some teenagers). The Bad, he theorized, vibrated in a way that beckoned people to commune en masse in pursuit of the unpolluted joys most often associated with childhood. You could tell both of these things, he said, by the way the blob of bodies contracted and expanded depending on whose music was being played. When “Darling Nikki” oozed out of the club’s speakers, couples pulled each other close and grinded as the subject of the song was reported to have done. When “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” jumped off the DJ’s platter, people parked at the bar suddenly sprinted to the dance floor where everyone — including the people without much rhythm — danced with everyone else and every mouth opened to sing every word of the song. I was a little bit drunk — and a lot bit tired — but mine own eyes witnessed what the painter was talking about. His argument was quite convincing. It also suggested strongly that the ultimate winner of the 20th Century clash between the Purple and the Bad was … the rest of us.
After the last notes of the last Michael Jackson song closed that Saturday night party, I had just enough time to PATH back to Newark to board a Sunday morning AMTRAK train bound for DC. I closed my eyes as soon as I found a seat. The next time I opened them the sign said Union Station — which is a $5 cab ride from the Liberian Girl’s house in Northwest DC.
I had parked my car at her place before I left town for the conference. I had also made a bargain that I’d spend some time with her on Sunday. After a nap and the Lakers first NBA Playoff game versus Kevin Durant’s team, we scanned the listings for the E Street Cinema and designed a simple evening for ourselves.
Over heaping bowls of noodles at the Noodle Bar on U Street, the Liberian Girl shook her head at my drooping eyes. “You’ll never make it through this movie,” she said. “You’ll be asleep before the last trailer is over.”
“What? Nuh-uh. I’m good.”
“Bet me, then.”
“Okay. Bet. What’s the wager?”
The wager we settled on is not the kind of thing you describe on the internet where your family may someday stumble across it. Let’s just say that no matter who lost, both of us were gonna win.
(Yes, I know. Get to the movie already.)
El secreto de sus ojos translates as The Secret in Their Eyes. The secret — in this Argentinian picture that won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Oscars — is twofold. There is, firstly, the mystery of a 25-year-old unsolved rape-murder. And there is the mystery of why two co-workers — who crushed on each other pretty egregiously — never chose to be more than co-workers to each other. One co-worker, the male lead, is a retired investigator. The other, the female lead, is a lawyer. They shared an office for many years before the investigator retired. As the investigator squirms through an itchy retirement, he scratches the urge to write a novel and peels back two scabs that become the twin conceits of our story.
The primary conceit is the rape-murder. A young banker finds his young wife’s body bloody, beaten and very not alive. The investigator promises the banker he will find the perpetrator and he will bring that dirty son-of-a-bitch to justice. Despite his best efforts, the investigator failed to do either of those things — a shortcoming that continued to haunt the investigator into his retirement. It haunted him to the point that it provided a convenient excuse for the investigator emeritus to visit his former colleague slash would-be lover (the lawyer) to inquire about the unsolved tragedy. The investigator wanted to write about the case. He also wanted to finally solve it. He also also wanted to revisit the love that never was — the secondary conceit.
Both conceits unfold deftly via flashback. There’s a lot of jumping back and forth between present-day and back-in-the-day. The same actors are used in both the present-day and the back-in-the-day scenes. Apart from costuming and set design, the key signifier for what point in time you’re seeing is hair and make-up. The make-up, it seems, is intentionally underwhelming to enable us to clearly connect all of the characters to their former selves. You may find the low-fidelity make-up work to be appalling. You may find it to be charming. Either way, there’s no doubting that its … low-fi. There also isn’t much doubt as to where you are in the timeline.
I was glad for that level of certainty as I struggled to stay awake. That is no indictment of the film. It’s a good story and it is well told. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says so. If you don’t believe them, you should take the Liberian Girl’s word for it as she liked it a lot. She also liked that she may have won the bet. I’m not sure I dozed all the way off, but I spent a fair part of act two working hard not to succumb to the fatigue I had accumulated in New Jersey and New York. At one point the English subtitles started to split like two taunting cells and they formed a second line of unintelligible text. If hallucination counts as falling asleep, then I suppose the Liberian Girl was right. (Either way, I paid off the bet. She liked that, too.)
I saw enough of the film to know that it was very worthy of the Oscar it won this Spring. Frankly, it could have been recognized for its cinematography as well. Shots are cleverly composed throughout, and close-ups are used to imbue the film with an intimacy that underscores the weight of the two secrets. In one sequence when the investigator is closing in on the rapist/murderer, the filmmakers take us into a crowded futbol stadium via steadicam to search the fans for the lead suspect. There’s some frantic scanning and a chase that ends on the field of play. During the scene, the motion of the camera laces up the audience’s sneakers and forces us to join the chase. It was one of the more poignant uses of steadicam I can remember. Perhaps the most.
I’d like to say more about the story and the secrets. But I’m leery of spoiling it because El secreto de sus ojos is one of the better films of the year and you should definitely see it. I can tell you that its journey through the past and deeper into the present is not without rewards — or an eye-opening twist.
DYL MAG Rating: 8
