“The eyes, chico. They never lie,” said Tony Montana in Scarface. And he was right, the eyes never lie – the only universal truth we can count on is in a person’s eyes. For an actor, the eyes are their main frame of communication. Think of all the great actors and the great scenes they represent in your mind. The thing that usually stands out most is the look in their eyes, whether they’re laughing or crying, or simply looking away in embarrassment or frustration; their eyes welcome you into their psyche, their reality; they tell you about their deepest fears, passions and desires.
When I think of an actor’s eyes and the power they hold on screen, I instantly think of the Argentine master – Ricardo Darin.

Darin – also nicknamed El Chivo by his fellow countrymen as in The Goat (The Greatest Of All Time) – is one of those actors whose vast body of work never crossed the line into Hollywood and for a good reason. Famous for rejecting all stereotypical parts that the American film industry likes to offer to Latin American actors including drug dealers, hitmen, rapists and corrupt officials, Darin focused most of his career on embracing the various shades of everyday men. His dedication to making every part count is still to this day proof that there is no such thing as a small, inconsequential role and – more importantly – all stories – and the voices behind them – matter.
Over the years, Darin went on to play a variety of losers. Losers only on paper, because in Darin’s hands these losers become more than what the world they inhabit expects of them. Darin’s characters always exceed these expectations; they defy orders and challenge systems – whether political or familiar – and break rules and conventions out of some odd sense of civility and honor. They are losers who are unsatisfied by their position in life. They want change. And yet, they do not resent their origins. On the contrary – they fight to preserve a certain way of life; a way of life that is usually endangered by Argentina’s tumultuous history, its instability as a country and its institutions.

This is not to say that Darin hasn’t played his fair share of assholes and power hungry criminals; in The Aura he plays a depressed taxidermist who aspires to become a robber and willingly takes part in murder; in Nine Queens his character is a professional conman with no regard for his own family; in Carancho, Darin plays a ‘vulture’ in the form of a lawyer specialized in traffic accident deaths. The list goes on, but nonetheless the greatest strength of Darin’s resume and acting is the fact that we never lose hope in his characters. He always leaves room for hope, for the viewer to continue believing in some kind of resolution for the character whose trials and tribulations he’s so invested in. And that is Darin’s trick – to keep you guessing, and he does so with his eyes.

Few actors can command the screen with a simple glance the way Darin does. The prime example of this being his performance in the 2009 Oscar-winning drama The Secret in Their Eyes where, as judiciary agent Benjamin Esposito in 1970s Argentina, Darin must decipher the rape and murder of a young woman named Liliana Colotto de Morales.
It is – as the title suggests – a film based on looks, looks that can tell secrets and deceive. In the case of his protagonist, Benjamin, Darin gets to play him at two very different points in time; we switch on an off from younger Benjamin in the 1970s working on the eve of Argentina’s military dictatorship and his older version operating in what can only be described as the free world in 1999. We witness as young, cocky and – to some degree – idealistic Benjamin Esposito transitions into a disillusioned, bitter and confused older man. His story is reflected by the story of his country, the people that eventually run it into the ground, dismissing the hard work and sacrifice of people like Benjamin or the devoted husband of Liliana Colotto de Morales. His story – like almost any story Ricardo Darin has been eager to tell throughout his career – is about keeping hope alive in the face of misfortune.

In fact, the eyes of Ricardo Darin are the eyes of a decent man who may not realize the extent of his own decency. His characters tend to doubt themselves and their purpose in the grand scheme of things – in the social or political system they belong to – but always seem to strive to make things ‘right’. This is also the case for investigator Benjamin Esposito who moves from the corrupt judiciary halls in Buenos Aires to the sleazy bars and desolate villages on the outskirts of the Argentine capital. His partner on the job and best friend, Pablo, is an alcoholic whom he must save from trouble repeatedly throughout the movie. Esposito’s higher-ups continue to tell him that he overdoes things – the message they’re trying to convey to him is, “say and do nothing, let things wash over.” Esposito’s own social status and background clashes with the vision of the new Argentina under military rule. He’s a poor man, the son of working class parents – even the name hints at a commoner’s origins. It’s a miracle he got this far.

The case of Liliana Colotto reawakens Esposito. It renews his interest in his own profession and gives him the chance to live vicariously through the pain and suffering of Liliana’s devoted husband – a man who every day spends several hours waiting at different train stations around the city in the hope of coming across Liliana’s killer. It is through the eyes of Liliana’s husband that Esposito sees “a love so pure, one I’ve never seen anywhere else. Never,” as he tells Irene, Benjamin’s own prohibited love interest.
Irene is of high society, well connected – she has a future in the new Argentina, whereas Benjamin, for better or worse, doesn’t. He is – like a lot of Darin’s characters – an underdog swimming in an ocean of sharks. His determination to persevere and fight the system often clashes with his innate naivety. And it is all visible through Darin’s eyes. The camera holds on Darin countless times throughout the early stages of the film; it captures the essence of a man who is not yet aware of what he – or anybody else for that matter – is capable of. He goes from believing that his actions have no relevance in the grand scheme of things to desperately trying to uncover a truth that may be just as personal to him as it is to Liliana Colotto’s husband. The realization that the political situation in his country mirrors his own state of mind, and more importantly his feelings, slowly dawns on him and we see it through the close-up on Darin’s weary eyes.

But the new Argentina doesn’t need truth. It needs convenient outcomes. It needs smooth, viable solutions. It needs strength and conviction at whatever cost – even at the cost of rehabilitating Liliana’s killer and rapist. In the new Argentina ruled by the military junta the past shall not be revisited. Benjamin Esposito lives off the past. He lives each day – like Liliana’s husband – looking over his shoulder, wishing he’d done something differently; not only about the case itself but about his own feelings toward Irene. Irene – the beautiful, smart, eloquent Irene – remains, in Benjamin’s narrow little world, an unattainable goal. Darin’s eyes tell the story of a man who fails to reckon with his own strengths. He considers himself not good enough, not worthy enough. And something as simple as that constitutes his ultimate downfall, his long and drawn out suffering. Because although Liliana Colotto’s husband is suffocated with grief, his life goes on purely based off his feelings toward his dead wife. He lives off his one passion – the love for Liliana. Meanwhile, Benjamin runs away from his feelings. In his old age he decides to write a book – write it all down, everything that happened with the Liliana Colotto case – but fails to see the recurring pattern, the tormenting ghosts that truly affected his life. Like his friend, Pablo, says at one point, “A guy can change anything. His face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change. He can’t change his passion.” Benjamin cannot change how he feels about Irene, but his lack of conviction ends up costing him dearly.

Director Juan Jose Campanella knows how to film Darin perhaps better than anyone else – their repeated collaborations over the years saw Darin become a true icon of Argentine cinema. In The Secret in Their Eyes, Campanella makes you doubt the intentions of almost any character that appears on the screen. By focusing on close-ups, we are forced to try and decipher the veiled motivations behind a person’s eyes. The only time we get the truth and nothing but the truth is when the camera decides to focus on Darin’s protagonist. Despite being directly involved in the story, he is a spectator just like the rest of us. Benjamin is puzzled by the same doubts that plague us. And like us, he means well, but fails to match the depravity, the cold-blooded nature of the culprits he is busy chasing. He is a decent man and in the new Argentina that is considered a deadly sin.

Perhaps the greatest strength in Darin’s wide array of talents is his tendency to come across as one of us. Actors can alienate audiences and very often they enjoy doing so, but Darin always chooses an interesting middle-ground; he wants you to believe him, become friends with him, or at the very least, try and understand his motivations and point of view before eventually betraying your expectations, both in the good and the bad. In The Secret in Their Eyes – which won Argentina a historic Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2010 – Darin sucks you into the sentimental life of a judiciary agent. Despite the focus being on the Liliana Colotto murder, Benjamin’s mirrored and seemingly unrequited love for Irene takes center-stage and becomes the star of the film. Few actors can turn a historical thriller chronicling the darkest years of a country into a romantic journey of personal self-discovery and make it worth your time. Darin certainly can. And it’s all because of his eyes – because there is equal measures of warmth, ambition and naivety in them to keep you hopeful. Governments come and go, but feelings remain.