Brazil could strike Oscar gold two years in a row with another film that warns of the dangers of authoritarianism.
The country’s latest International Feature entry, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent has been nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture, the second year in a row Brazil has achieved that startling feat. In addition, it’s up for Best International Feature, Best Actor (Wagner Moura) and Best Casting.
Additionally, The Secret Agent just received two BAFTA nominations for Original Screenplay and Film Not in the English Language.
Set in 1977, The Secret Agent is a politically-charged, mystery-crime-thriller that pays homage to the best films of the 1970s, especially the work of Alan J. Pakula, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet and Steven Spielberg–there are actually several major references to Jaws.
Like last year’s much deserved International Feature Oscar winner, Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, the film deals with the country’s authoritarian past.
From the delightfully odd and disquieting opening sequence at a gas station in the middle of nowhere where we meet corrupt cops, and a decaying corpse –to the next scene where a hairy human leg is found stuck in a dead shark’s mouth, to a later sequence where a movie theater showing The Omen has patrons screaming and fainting, Filho is a master of narrative invention that continuously beguiles the viewer. And even at a 2-hour, 40-minute, running time, he leaves you wanting more.
The sprawling, genre-blend narrative centers on Armando (Moura, just brilliant), a leftist, widowed, uni professor attempting to escape the wrath of a bigoted government bureaucrat, who’s part of Brazil’s military dictatorship. This racist official has hired two men to murder Armando, now hiding out in Racife, under the alias Marcelo, with other political enemies of the state, under the protection of an intrepid 77-year-old known as Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria, both hilarious and poignant).
Armando spends time with his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes) who is being cared for by his thoughtful father-in-law (Carlos Francisco), while awaiting passports so he can flee the country, with Fernando in tow.
The two hitmen, Augusto (Roney Villela) and Bobbi (stunning Gabriel Leone), are actually step-father and son, respectively—stepdad alleged to have killed mom. And they, in turn, hire another man—a total lunatic– to do their bidding. From there the insanity builds to several bracing climaxes with surreal touches like the true urban legend about a hairy leg that comes to life. In the film the leg goes on a kicking rampage in a park filled with gay men having sex!
The film ends in a way that has frustrated some audience members and excited others. “So many people who love cinema do not accept the logic of life applied to a film narrative,” Filho offers.
The writer-director deftly uses real events to tell a wildly imaginative fiction that examines fascism, racism, superstition, religion, memory/amnesia as well as the potency of father/son relationships.
Throughout this cinematic endeavor one gets the sensation that the filmmaker has a tremendous love for the medium. And it’s infectious.
Filho and the film have amassed many accolades including the Best Director Award at Cannes, the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film as well as many critics’ association citations.
Filho’s last narrative feature was Bacurau, in 2019, a wild, subversive western of sorts that also received great acclaim and amassed a host of awards, including the Jury Prize at Cannes.
In 2023, he made the doc film essay, Pictures of Ghosts, which was Brazil’s International Feature submission, and can be seen as a preamble to The Secret Agent.
The auteur started out as a film journalist, then embarked on creating a number of celebrated short films before making his feature debut with Neighboring Sounds in 2012. His second film, Aquarius, in 2016, starred the great Sônia Braga.
Released by Neon, The Secret Agent is currently playing in theaters.
The Contending had the pleasure of a video chat with Kleber.
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