It's cool if you see it that way. Again, my viewpoint is that all of that lost time is magnified by the fact that they do get together. If Esposito leaves Morales' house and the movie ends, I don't even feel that part of the movie.
I think it's bittersweet. I think that it's happy that they are together but, like you say, there will always be this shadow of lost time/what could have been over it.
What I mean by evidence is all of the examples of a so called more accessible film not winning. It happens a lot, yet this particular time you believe the film won because of that reason, and it just so happens to be a time when you disagree with the result.
I tend to find many if not most Best Foreign Film winners pretty accessible, or at least those that have won in my lifetime.
Life is Beautiful, All About My Mother, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Barbarian Invasions, The Sea Inside, Roma, Parasite. (These are from years where I saw both the winning film and at least a few of its competitors).
There are films that I think are great that most other people think are great, and there are films I think are great that fall more into that love it/hate it place. When I say "accessible" or "broad appeal", I'm talking about films in the former category.
I don't question that you know plenty about it but you did say you didn't know the film was intended to be analogous.
I say that I don't find it that analogous because it is a film about political corruption in Argentina in the 80s that takes place . . . in a politically-tinged environment in Argentina in the 80s. You can say things like "Gomez represents all of the people who committed atrocities and got away with it," but I find that the analogy is then pretty close to the actual thing you are describing.
That's it right there. You find them comparable, so you are looking for what gave one the edge (alternative reason). Personally, an uncomfortable and upsetting movie is what gives one the edge for me, yet I go the other way in this particular comparison. You have no idea of what the voters are thinking. I would tend to believe that on average the voters are voting for the movie that they believe to be better.
I mean . . . I also think people vote for what they think is the better film. And I am suggesting that several elements of
The Secret in Their Eyes and specifically the emotions it produces in the viewer would make people inclined to like it more than something more divisive like
Dogtooth. I think it's strange to pretend that things like genre don't influence how much people like a certain film. And structure/plot/organization are NOT an "alternative reason" because they are actually aspects of the film itself. An alternative reason would be something like "Oh, the director died so they want to give it the award" or "Oh, that country just had a disaster and we want to boost their spirits!"--something outside of the film itself.
I agree with most of that except you have no idea what appeals to the voters, and again I point to other "less accessible films winning awards". If what you say is really a factor, I would expect more consistency out of the results.
Several interviews (around
Brokeback Mountain, but the point still stands) has indicated that many Academy members will straight up avoid films if they don't like the subject matter. I'm inferring that most Academy members would be comfortable with a thriller/mystery like
The Secret in Their Eyes.
No not at all. The gap I have between those movies is much greater than yours, yet I would never declare that any of them are better, only that one is better for me. That's as far as I would go. My gripe is your disbelief that the voters could be voting for the right reasons because it doesn't coincide with your belief. Every year you hear people say the Awards suck and they don't know what they're doing, except the times they happen to agree with the result.
I don't know what you mean by "the right reasons". Liking a film the best is the right reason. And while I have ideas about why the film won (all of which have to do with the film itself and not anything external), I'm not mad about it winning. I'm not saying it
shouldn't have won.
I mean, when I say that I think that the other films are better, of course I mean that they are better
for me. And since I can place other films above it, of course I can imagine other people doing the same.
Not to stoke the flames too much, but I just learned in reading more about this that
The Headless Woman came out the same year and Argentina decided not to nominate it! So my hot take is now that it's fine that
The Secret in Their Eyes won the Oscar, but also that it's funny that there was a better Argentinian film that year that didn't even get a shot.