For Juan Jose Campanella, It’s in the Eyes

During last month’s Academy Awards, Argentinean writer/director/editor Juan José Campanella, whose film El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) won Best Foreign Language Film, joked during his Oscar speech, “I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na’vi a foreign language.”

A funny reference to the fictitious language spoken in Avatar, the joke died on impact. When I mentioned to the filmmaker that I thought his line was very humorous, a friendship for life was born.

“Thank you so much,” Campanella offers sincerely.“Nobody laughed when I said that. I don’t think anybody understood what I was talking about.”

But everyone really seems to be getting his multi-layered and poignant thriller that interweaves the personal lives of a state prosecution investigator and a judge, with a manhunt spanning 25 years. The Sony Pictures Classics  award winner will be in theaters April 16.

“I don’t see this as a ‘film noir,’ the director explains. “The driving forces behind this movie are an undeclared love that has lasted for years, frustration, and the emptiness felt by the main characters.”

Set during a politically tumultuous time in Argentina’s history, as the characters seek solace and heal, so to does the filmmaker’s beloved homeland.

“As we now recover our memory of the 1970s as a country, we know that the horror began to take shape before the military dictatorship,” Campanella points out. “The story takes place in that Argentina as the very air thickened, creeping up on and enveloping even the key players.”

Campanella, 50, was an electronic engineering student in 1980 when he saw Frank Capra’s classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, an experience that, he says, literally changed his life, turning his career toward the cinema and New York University’s film school. He calls taut 1970s Hollywood classics like Dog Day Afternoon a seminal influence.

“There was a gritty quality to those films — they didn’t really have a happy ending, and people could empathize with them,” Campanella remarks. “I don’t see myself in a lot of movies today. It’s not easy to empathize with Wolverine.”

Next for the Argentine, whose 2001 film El hijo de la novia (Son of the Bride) was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is a 3-D animated film. Campanella, also an Emmy Award-winning director who has worked on such hit shows as “Law & Order SVU,” “House,” and “30 Rock,” recently noted that he believes in five years time 3-D filmmaking will be commonplace.

“That technology is here to stay,” he says, assuring that won’t affect his work as a director. “My job is to tell stories  and that’s not going to change despite all these advances.” Campanella’s Oscar win bestowed a sense of national pride in Argentina which the filmmaker is proud of, even if he is leery of any nationalistic aspects in a country where intense nationalism has historically been twisted for political gain.

“Of course I’m proud and happy to give people a reason to smile, but I’m wary of its being taken as such a national triumph,” the director cautions. “What it really shows is that when a bunch of us get together and do our best, we can achieve the top level of everyone else.” ▼