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The secrets behind Secret in their Eyes – Metro US

The secrets behind Secret in their Eyes

On an Oscar telecast filled with preening stars, one of the nicer moments came courtesy of Argentinean director Juan Jose Campanella, who accepted the Best Foreign-Language Film award for The Secret in Their Eyes with genuine humility and a sly sense of humour.

“I want to thank the Academy,” he smiled, “For not considering Na’vi a foreign language.”

Campanella’s joke was supposed to emphasize the disparity in size between James Cameron’s box office behemoth and his own film, which details the toll of a gruesome rape and murder case on the life of a state prosecutor over a period of thirty years. But the fact is that there’s nothing in Avatar as cinemographic impressive as the centrepiece action sequence in The Secret in Their Eyes, which descends from the sky above a Buenos Aires soccer stadium and into its crowded interior in the space of a single shot.

“I think of my movies as symphonies,” explains Campanella over the phone. “I like them to have different movements, different rhythms. I thought that [at that point in the film] there had been a lot of cerebral, quiet scenes. I needed a crescendo.

“I wanted something different -— to make people feel like they were there, like they were being thrown into the bleachers. And to do that, I felt like I couldn’t break the point of view.”
The director admits that there are editing tricks at play in the shot, which took one year to prepare, three days to shoot and nine months to fiddle with in post-production.

“It is computer assisted, but 95 per cent of it is handheld,” he says, while emphasizing that for all of its lush 1970s period detail, The Secret in Their Eyes was still a relatively modest production.

“In Argentina, it is what is called an ‘industrial’ movie,” he explains. “But we still shot it in seven weeks. The country is begging for a redefinition of what an ‘independent’ movie is.”

While The Secret in Their Eyes is designed to work as a thriller, it also features a strong romantic element. its protagonist’s lingering obsession over the murder case he couldn’t solve as a young man dovetails with his unrequited affection for his boss.

“The main change from (Eduardo Sacheri’s) novel is the character of Irene (Soledad Villami). In the book, she’s a background character, seen from a distance. But in making the film, I realized that what tied it all of the characters together was passion, which manifested in many forms, both pure and perverted. So I wanted Ricardo and Irene’s relationship to come into the foreground.”