THE STORY – Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. He arrives in Recife during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son but soon realizes that the city is far from being the non-violent refuge he seeks.
THE CAST – Wagner Moura, Udo Kier, Gabriel Leone & Maria Fernanda Cândido
THE TEAM – Kleber Mendonça Filho (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 158 Minutes
Never one to shy away from the controversy that once engulfed his native country (and still does to this day), Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho is back following the 2019 narrative feature release of “Bacurau” and his non-fiction 2023 film “Pictures of Ghosts” with “The Secret Agent.” As you can imagine, Kleber Mendonça Filho is deeply fascinated with exploring Brazilian history, its people, and customs. For this story, he’s covering a point in time when he would’ve only been nine years old, giving it this a reflective quality and aura of importance for the filmmaker as he wishes to pass it down as an artistic work that serves as a time capsule for the next generation. His adoration for Brazil, this story, and cinema as a whole is felt in nearly every frame of this expansive two-and-a-half-hour history lesson disguised as a political noir thriller.
Under the scorching hot sun during the summer of 1977 in Recife, Brazil, during a period, as the film puts it, of “great mischief,” a story unfolds following a mysterious man with a clouded past who has fled northern Brazil following nearly 100 deaths during Brazil’s Carnaval festivities to reconnect with his young son. The man is Marcelo (Wagner Moura). However, his real name is Armando, and he soon finds himself caught up in the city’s oppressive political climate and mounting violence under the iron grip of the country’s military dictatorship. He pulls up to a roadside gas station just outside the city in his yellow Beetle, and from the jump, the audience is thrust into the potential dangers that await Marcelo as he sees a corpse covered with cardboard. The police pull up, and their casual indifference sets the tone for a new Brazil where corruption runs deep, and danger lurks at every turn. Marcelo, ever cautious but never losing his composed demeanor, pays off the officers and presses on, already aware he’s being hunted.
Following the death of his wife from pneumonia, he simply wants to spend time with his son, who is obsessed with sharks due to the popularity of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” now playing at the Cinema São Luiz, run by Marcelo’s father-in-law, Alexandre. But Marcelo’s past is coming back for him as a hit has been put out by an old rival on his life, which drives him to link up with an underground network of fellow fugitives orchestrated by Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido). Within a safe house run by the charismatic 77-year-old matriarch Dona Sebastiana, Marcelo finds a haven among a collective of outsiders and refugees. All are victims of a regime that would rather erase them than explain their existence (there’s even a deformed cat who lives there). Marcelo takes a cover job at the city’s Identification Records Office, which allows him to access documents linked to his deceased loved ones. His presence there draws the attention of the local police chief, Euclides (Robério Diógenes), who may or may not be on Marcelo’s side. Amongst all of this, the people of Recife are engulfed by a strange obsession: a human leg uncovered inside a dead shark’s belly. The tabloids go wild, and just as the times created the folklore around the “hairy leg,” Mendonça Filho has a tremendous amount of fun with it, crafting a surreal sequence in which the leg terrorizes a cruising park for gay men. This gory, comic interlude doubles as a satirical metaphor, showing how the regime weaponized fear and urban legend to control behavior and stifle dissent.
Separated into three chapters, flashbacks reveal Marcelo may have been part of a university research group and that his former rival, now aligned with the authoritarian elite, wants him silenced. Two hitmen are dispatched, and despite having a cooler-than-cool presence about him, Marcelo is nonviolent and doesn’t even carry a weapon to defend himself. Those expecting a pulse-pounding thriller with a high body count and lots of gunfire may be disappointed in this respect. That’s not to say there aren’t bullets shot or a body count of some kind in “The Secret Agent,” but much of it arrives later in the film when some audiences might’ve already mentally checked out.
Those who don’t, though, will be vastly rewarded by what Mendonça Filho provides here. Interwoven with Marcelo’s 1977 storyline are scenes set in the modern day, where two university students transcribe cassette tapes from recorded interviews and phone conversations from that era. One of them, Flavia (Laura Lofesi), becomes fixated on Marcelo’s voice, slowly piecing together his story from archival recordings, which explains why so much of the film unfolds unhurriedly in such painstaking detail. We’re experiencing the story as Flavia does, with characters coming in and out of the story, scenes stretching on perhaps far longer than they need to, and a slight meandering quality that starts to overtake before the story introduces something of importance that jolts the viewer back into the story. Flavia’s role, an echo of Elza’s (and as a stand-in for the audience), reflects the film’s meditation on memory, the pursuit of truth, and the disconnected nature of history as the next generation tries to piece it together as a form of healing and understanding.
The past and present are linked not only through the audio tapes but also through Brazil itself as a setting for this story. Mendonça Filho infuses Recife’s decaying buildings, movie theaters, and sun-drenched streets with a high level of detail and resonance (something he very much explored in “Pictures of Ghosts”), which is reflected in the production design and really makes the film come alive through its widescreen cinematography. Particularly, the São Luiz Cinema (which shows clips of “The Omen” at one point) is also a place for collective memory to gather, and human experiences are projected and absorbed for generations to experience later. Such a love for cinema is also felt throughout the film as Mendonça Filho utilizes many different cinematic techniques to tell his story, from split diopter shots to editing wipes to split screens to vintage Panavision cinematography and eclectic soundtrack choices. He clearly is having a blast with the art form, and the audience is simply along for the smooth ride.
All of this wouldn’t work without the magnetism of Wagner Moura. Mostly famous in Brazil, he’s finally achieved worldwide recognition in recent years for his work in “Narcos,” “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish” and most recently with “Civil War.” “The Secret Agent” looks to capitalize on that momentum (and the success of last year’s Best Picture-nominated, Best International Feature Oscar-winning Brazilian film “I’m Still Here“) by showcasing Moura in the proper light as a leading man. He exudes old-school movie star charm, with a commanding screen presence that makes him such a joy to watch as he plays many different registers here, from calm under pressure to tender and sweet with his son to vulnerable in his confessions to Elza. It’s a wonderful showcase for him and will hopefully expand his global appeal even more, leading to further opportunities.
With its sprawling cast (Udo Kier briefly shows up as a WWII German exile), a relevant narrative steeped in political paranoia and a pure love for the cinematic art form, “The Secret Agent” may very well go down as a masterpiece of modern Latin American cinema. Some will inevitably become restless with its runtime and lack of conventional action and excitement. “The Secret Agent” is not a conventional espionage story, and it’s all the more fascinating for it. The “agent” may not even be Marcelo, but rather those who preserve records and carry memory across generations. In its final scenes, with the long-forgotten recordings of Marcelo offering Flavia a fragmented look into the past, it suggests that even in regimes built on silence and oppression, some voices will still find a way to be heard and passed down. This resounding message behind Mendonça Filho’s latest and his bold choices in telling this story makes it a chapter in history worth exploring.
