This is cinema

Rating: 10/10 (26 August 2010)

Recently retired law-enforcer Esposito goes to see his old boss Irene to talk about a novel he wants to write, based on a disturbing rape-homicide case they worked together 25 years previously. His jottings stir memories and passions long neglected but never eradicated.
Campanella's genre-mix, part period piece set in the Dirty War years of Argentina's late 20th-century police state, is a joyous emotional odyssey. The opening comedic tone is almost screwball comedy, giving way to the tragedy of youth and beauty mutilated in its prime, in a simple p.o.v shot timed to perfection that simply takes your breath away. The pacing of the film is exquisite, moving from sequence to sequence and shifting tonality in a manner both daring and effortless.
There are incredible performances from the leads. Ricardo Darín as Esposito carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, despite the flirtatious and foul-mouthed quips. He is an essentially good man in a corrupt universe. Like James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder, he has a drunk for a side-kick, irascible Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), a man whose aversion to phone conversations is matched by his penchant for self-annihilation. For him, redemption can only come in the form of sacrifice. Irene (Soledad Villamil) has her own regrets, centering on a parting at a train station, a sequence that book-ends the first two-thirds of the film, before the narrative moves on to explore if there truly is anything beyond the deceptive succor of memory.
Despite the overtly political setting of the story, the film stays resolutely with the individual characters and their personal dilemmas. That is not to say it shirks the big questions. What is the sum total of a life? What does it mean to do the right thing in an amoral world? How do we go on knowing all we live for has been taken from us? Is there a punishment crueler than death? The film not only poses the questions, but dares to answer them, flooding the audience with catharsis in waves.
I haven't seen a film this moving, so satisfyingly complex, so rooted in human frailty, since The Lives of Others. Watch The Secret in Their Eyes, watch it again, take your friends, talk about it, celebrate it, love it. Bravo.