There is always one shock at the Oscars, and this year was no different. No, it wasn’t that Avatar didn’t win Best Film – Hurt Locker was a worthy winner – it was, again, in the Foreign Language Film of the Year.
The favourite was Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon, a brilliant, chilling look at German society just before the Great War – a world of child abuse, violence, bleakness and despair which, Haneke argues, created the biggest monster of the 20th century, Nazism. Close on the outside rail – and my prediction in an Oscars preview piece – was the French prison drama A Prophet, a mesmeric study of how a poor, insignificant boy became head boy in a tough institution – which is mirrored in the society outside the walls.
It had to be one or the other but no, of course, the Academy pulled a surprise and gave the Oscar to Secrets In Their Eyes from Argentina. The UK press called it a shock, but what they meant was they haven’t seen the film yet (A Prophet and White Ribbon have been released on bother side of the pond, while Secrets In Their Eyes hasn’t). I have, and, despite the merits of the other nominations, Secrets is a simply stunning film, complex, powerful, full of twists, and with a very serious matter at its heart.
Did the Academy get it right, or are they playing a complex political game to please different countries every year? It’s hard to say without being on the inside of the process, but the Foreign Language film is something of a strange beast at the Oscars. For example, last year produced another ‘shock’ when Waltz With Bashir and The Class were overlooked in favour of Japanese film Departures. The gentle comedy was beautifully written and performed, but it seemed slight compared to the others, but maybe it was merely Japan’s turn to win.
In 2008 it was Austria’s turn with the brilliant The Counterfeiters, but did it win because it was the best film, or because it was Austria finally facing up to its dubious history? The same could be said of Germany the year before, with Lives Of Others providing a brilliant look at East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. All of the five films that year could have won – 2007 will be remembered as the year Pan’s Labyrinth DIDN’T win an Oscar, but other films – Water and Days Of Glory, also dealt with a country coming to terms with its past. Glory was about the Algerians’ role in winning World War II, while Water, although qualified as Canada’s entry, was actually about India’s shameful treatment of women. (You can find out more about how the Foreign Language film Oscar is chosen by clicking here).
Secrets In Their Eyes is a deep look at Argentina in the 70s, the oppressive Junta years, but seen through a murder case and the legal system’s breakdown in dealing with it. A lawyer takes on a case where a young newly-wed woman has been brutally raped and murdered. The incompetent police pin the crime on two builders, but the lawyer frees them. Years later he tracks down the real killer and finally wins the case, much to the relief of the victim’s husband. The murderer though is freed on condition he becomes a government henchman, so the lawyer and husband have to find him again and mete out their own justice. But are they becoming the real victims in the case? Who is going to win in the long run?
Secrets In Their Eyes covers many genres – legal thriller, moral drama, but it is clearly a critique of how Argentina lost its way politically in the 1970s – so much corruption, so much incompetence. It shares that with Lives Of Others and The Counterfeiters a cleansing look at its country’s shady past – not too far in the past either. It also works on other levels though, which could not be said of White Ribbon – which is all subtext and no text – or A Prophet, which is simply a tale of survival.
So have the Academy got it right or wrong? As usual there are no easy answers – White Ribbon won Cannes, A Prophet won the BAFTA, so maybe Secrets In Their Eyes was the right winner. Perhaps it’s a timely reminder that Argentina is in a darker place right now than France or Germany politically. There’s only one answer – see all three films and see which one leaves the biggest impression in the mind. The good news is that World Cinema is in a healthy state, and there has never been more interest in foreign-language films in the UK than now – and that’s a good thing.
MIKE MARTIN
