Movie Details
| Title: | The Secret Agent | |
| Director: | Kleber Mendonca Filho | |
| Year: | 2025 | |
| Genre: | Drama | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 01.31.26 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 01.31.26 | Internet | Wagner Moura plays... a guy in 1977 Brazil who returns to his hometown... and stuff happens. I didn't know a lot about this other than it's supposed to be good and the trailer more or less sold it as Moura's a secret agent or undercover or something of that ilk. The first act of the movie also hints at that so I feel like it's spoilers to mention to much more although just saying that tips you off that it's not what you think which is a spoiler unto itself so... SPOILERS He's not a secret agent. At least not that I understand. To be honest there's still a lot about this movie that I don't completely comprehend, but as I understand it the day after watching (because it's two hours forty minutes like every movie these days and I didn't want to write this note as the sun came up), he's like a political refugee because he upset the wrong person so he had to go into hiding? So he uses a fake name but... he also comes back to his hometown? where the father of his deceased wife is taking care of his son. So if he's out and about with his father in law it feels like he's not exactly Anne Frank. But that's sort of beside the point. I think mostly this movie is a commentary of living life under some sort of authoritarian regime. There are titles at the beginning which say this takes place in 1977 which was a time of much mischief (or something to that effect) and I don't really know anything about Brazilian history so I suspect there's many layers to this film that I missed because off that. But it's pretty clear that all the cops and ex military figures basically get to do whatever they want and Moura finds himself amongst other refugees and a network of resistance or at least sympathetic figures who help him. He also has contact with someone in the government? and has a recorded conversation with someone in that network? presumably? Oh, and then it cuts to modern day and we learn that we're experiencing the story as this girl listens and digitizes old tapes as part of her job. So it's like a little Assassin's Creed type structure that explains fragments of narrative and jumps in time. It also sets up the largest anti-climax in recent memory. This is really deep spoilers now so if you thought I was kidding and kept reading, i'm serious now. Stop here if you haven't seen this movie and want to. It's a good movie. I know I haven't gotten to the part of my note where I say how good it is but it's a good movie. If you like Wagner Moura or 70s Brazilian music or want to see some interesting Brazilian faces and a boob or two stop reading. Ok, so we follow Moura's character for almost two and a half hours, and the narrative just stops because the tape stops I guess? Then there's a short scene where the girl listening to the tapes talks with her co-worker about looking up what happened to these people and she finds a scanned newspaper and there's an article saying Moura died with a picture of him laying bloody and shot on the street. Just a still in the newspaper, and that's it! Then the girl goes to talk to Moura's son (who's also played by Moura) and we learn that he never knew anything, that she probably knows more about his family's life than he does, and that's it! Ooph! Now, this might sound like a total kick in the balls non-ending, but I think it just serves to reinforce that the theme of this movie is about more than Moura's character. He's just the conduit to visit how life in general was back in those days. So the brutal way in which is story is finished - both for him as a character and for us as viewers - just serves to show how dark those days were. Compare that to a movie like House of Dynamite (or whatever it was called) and to me it's totally different. This movie still delivers a satisfying ending, it's just not the ending you expect or necessarily want. It's not since No Country for Old Men that I've felt such a narrative gut punch. Seriously affecting. But the whole movie makes some interesting choices in what it shows us. That extra 70 minutes goes to airy scenes I think were meant to evoke some sense of living back then. Some scenes reminded me of Roma (Cuaron's not Fellini's) in their specificity. It's a pretty odd watch where I didn't really know what was going on for the first thirty or forty minutes. All that said, I liked it a lot. I thought all the performances were amazing, I loved the look of the film, Once I got to the end and kind of realized what the movie was I can look back at the beginning and put some pieces together. I do still think there's a lot I didn't get but that's ok. It felt like a real glimpse of Brazilian culture, not just the Rio / Carnival / glitz or the City of God / Favella crime. There is a bit of glitz, there is a bit of crime (with some nicely effective use of gore). There's also a weird relationship with the movie Jaws happening and Udo Kier pops up somewhat randomly but he adds very nice flavor. Again, you kinda think of a German living in Brazil in the 70s and think maybe he's a nazi (which the dirty cops also assume) but quickly learn he's Jewish and has to suffer indignities all the way over on this continent just the same as he did in his homeland. I think with how some parts of the world are going (USA most directly since that's where I live), the parallels and clear signs that we're entering a new phase in direct opposition to what our previous generations fought against is pretty clear so the messaging of a lot of recent shows and movies have also been pretty clear. This is a movie I don't think any redhats would understand but perhaps in Brazil the message is just as clear as a show like The Boys is here in America. It probably is now that I think about it, which makes this paragraph moot. I was about to say I liked how it was subtle, almost a bait and switch. You put the movie on thinking it's a spy thriller and find a very humanistic portrayal of life under corrupt authoritarian regime instead. Good stuff. |
