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By Collin, on February 22nd, 2011

#22 We just watched this on Netflix streaming.You should too!: The Secret in Their Eyes

The Film: The Secret in Their Eyes

Movies with this kind of patience don’t get made anymore. It seemed to be a movie made by a Argentinian film industry screaming to be noticed. By the way, the Argentinian president is SO hot. She’s a dime. She looks like a former Brazilian Playboy bunny or something. It is FUCKING crazy. Like, we think we’re the progressive, forward-thinking country and they’re the ones with a really hot president. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the movie – but she did pose with the filmmakers after they won the first Oscar for their country.

Moreover, the film follows a retired government official Benjamin as he’s trying to write a novel about a past case that haunts him. The story is told in the past as well as future and we gleam important events as the movie progresses. To be frank, digging into the past makes shit go down.

Why to watch it: It has one of the best action scenes ever made

The common complaint with this movie is that, for the most part, it is slow. Things do take a while to get going. However, out of where comes the scene everybody probably talks about. It is so crazy that I actually leaned over in the movie theater and said, “How the fuck did they do that?”

The chase sequence at the soccer game is top five chases of all time. It does what I love in an action sequence : It infrequently cuts and lets camera technique and characters garner the intensity of the scene. This is the way it should be done. Christopher Nolan and Zach Snyder are famous for this.

Pay attention to this: Camera technique

There is a language to film. There is no doubt about that. I mean, people can flame me all day about it, but that is just the truth. The technique used by Juan José Campanella is impeccable. I’m rarely  in awe of a director’s mastery, (except whenever I watch a Kurosawa or Kurbrick movie) but this guy is a fucking cock star. His use of close-ups and depth-of-focus masterful. Also, his use of special effects for aesthetic and framing sake reminds me of Orson Welles.  I was disappointed that White Ribbon didn’t win for Best Foreign film because I do think its a more “important” film…if that makes sense? You should check that one out too. Make it a double feature.

-Collin.

By Collin, on June 7th, 2010

The Secret in Their Eyes

Can a five minute sequence win an Oscar? Probably not. But one five minute, uncut, special effects sequence in The Secret in Their Eyes definitely wowed cinemaphiles the world over. It certainly made me scratch my head.

When I see Optimus Prime transform, I know how they did it: 3-D modeling and thousands of computers rendering complicated elements for months on end. Simple. That doesn’t mean it isn’t totally badass. It certainly is. But I love a little filmmaking trickery.

The chase sequence in this film is one most extraordinary scenes in past memory and is an odd combination of practical camera tricks, complicated camera tricks, and subtle CGI. Filmmakers around the world are obsessed with showing off what they can do with faked/real single shots. I’ve included a few of my favorite at the end of the article. Common viewers don’t really care about that type of shit though, so it really is just filmmakers winking at each other.

Moreover, The Secret in Their Eyes beat out White Ribbon for the foreign film Oscar. It isn’t hard to see why. White Ribbon is a challenging film. Its style is antiquated, complicated, patient, and meticulous. As is the craft of The Secret in Their Eyes, but Secret is much more accessible.

The film opens in the year 2000 where Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is writing a book about a murder/rape he investigated in the seventies. It is easy to tell that this investigation still haunts him over three decades later. It isn’t clear why. The film also opens with an extraordinary sequence of blurry images that push and pull out of focus as a man boards a train. It must have been done with green-screen or something. Shit is crazy.

Moreover, the film cuts back and forth from the modern era to the murder case. In the past Benjamin and his assistant Pablo (Guillermo Francella ) are two investigators who don’t seem to take their job too seriously. Or maybe they’re just not supposed to.

We get the impression early on that the rape case is not going to work out well. The investigators’ office is a sea of stacked documents, bureaucratic papers, and is just a chaotic atmosphere overall. Every time the phone rings, Pablo answers with a fictitious business name. He and Benjamin avoid doing work and speaking to people like they’re avoiding the plague. It almost seems like that is why they’re there, to avoid doing their job. Maybe it is?

Even when we meet the straight-edge Judge’s assistant, played by drop-dead gorgeous Soledad Villamil, we sense that avoiding work is commonplace, if not procedural. The director brilliantly frames shots of the stacks of documents with the characters in the film. As if the documents are characters themselves and the filmmaker is merely doing a subjective over-the-shoulder shot.

Then the murder/rape happens. The filmmakers do a good job to show how disturbed Benjamin is by this. Something in his mind clicks. He has to solve this murder. There are political undertones to this film which could almost be called didactic, but don’t worry, this is purely a whodunit.

But a truly spectacular whodunit. This type of film would never be made in the States. It is stubbornly patient and doesn’t allow the audience any clues to where it might lead. Its makers know the power of film language and what properly executed film techniques can say to an audience.

It is hard for me to say exactly what kind of tone the film takes. It is very Coen Brotherish with is combination of violence, comedy, suspense, romanticism, visual flair, and drama – all of which somehow mesh into one of the best films from last year. Regardless, at least rent the damn movie for the chase sequence – god damn – it is audacious.

Release date: Varied throughout 2009 and 2010.

Collin says: A+

You’ll say: A

My favorite long takes:

Tony Jaa giving boners to action lovers across the world in The Protector:

My hero Alfonso Cuaron and his emphasis on long takes in Children of Men:

My third choice was the Dunkirk scene from Atonement, but Youtube blocks them all from the United States,  so I feel obliged to at least link the beautiful song playing during that scene.

The last, and by far my favorite: Y Tu Mama Tambien