Emotions and Theme in El Secreto de sus Ojos and Secret in Their Eyes: Exploring Stories through the Hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur

This article explores the relationship between emotions and themes in the stories presented in El Secreto de sus Ojos (Campanella, 2009) and its remake Secret in Their Eyes (Jackson & Johnson, 2015). The approach draws from Paul Ricoeur’s method for the interpretation of texts, which stems from the analytic study of their discourse. This makes it possible to infer an interpretation of the theme (what the story aims at) starting from an itemized study of the plot (characters in action within a dramatic structure). The article looks into the way in which some emotions are presented in each story, the characters involved, why, where, and when they show up, their effects, etc. It examines the inciting moment of the plots, the relationship between plots and subplots, the emotions revealed in the midpoint and the resolutions. At the end, and following Ricoeur and Garcia-Noblejas, I propose that the different articulation of the emotions in the two films explains the difference in their understanding of the theme they are exploring: the meaning of justice.