by A.J.
Best Pictures #122: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“Our story is set in the Brazil of 1977, a period of great mischief…”
The Secret Agent has intrigue, characters with mysterious backgrounds and multiple identities, characters on the lam, hired assassins, secret meetings, escape plans that need fake passports, corrupt authority figures, and underground networks, but it is not a spy movie. If the titular 'secret agent' is anybody, it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo in the 1973 film Le Magnifique, also titled, The Man From Acapulco, The Magnificent One, and The Magnificent Secret Agent, in which he plays an author who has elaborate and ridiculous fantasies about being a spy. We see a clip of the trailer at the movie theater where one of the characters works. Perhaps it was unintentional but no less fitting that director Kleber Mendonça Filho included a reference to a movie that had different names for different locations. The main character of The Secret Agent also goes by different names in different locations.
This is an incredibly well crafted film set in 1977 in Brazil during its military dictatorship about how the realities of living under a dictatorship have forced ordinary people to behave and act like they are a secret agent in a spy movie. So, Marcelo (Wagner Moura) does more or less everything you might expect a secret agent to do. We do not learn his backstory for a long time but we never really get the impression that he is a spy or anything close to it. As I mentioned before, there is mystery and intrigue, and even a shoot out, but this is far from an action movie. It is a moving drama that you hope never turns into a thriller because of what it would mean for the characters.
When Marcelo returns to the city of Recife at the start of Carnivale he is greeted with surprise and even apprehension by nearly everyone he meets, except for his young son Fernando. We come to learn that Marcelo is not his real name, that he is mourning the loss of his wife, wants to leave Brazil with his son, and his only friends and allies are those who are also out of favor with the state. In a moving scene at the apartment of Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), an elderly woman who provides shelter and assistance to those on the run, one after one reveals that they are under a death threat. Marcelo is set up with a job at the identification documents institute where he searches for evidence to prove that his mother existed; we never learn the full story of her disappearance. This could be a whole movie in itself but Marcelo is only there to bide time until he can flee Brazil with his son.
What really makes The Secret Agent something special is that it is filled with so many characters, who, no matter their screen time, could be the main character of their own movie. There is Marcelo's father-in-law who works at the movie theater and looks after Fernando; There is Elza, a member of the underground resistance who interviews Marcelo and tries to arrange his passport; There is Dona Sebastiana and everyone she gives shelter to. There is the German Hans (Udo Kier in his final performance for one intense and powerful scene) who the obnoxious and corrupt local police chief likes to show off like an oddity because he believes Hans is a former Nazi soldier (Hans is actually a Holocaust survivor). The police chief and his son and adopted son are the contacts for the pair of hitmen hired to kill Marcelo. The Secret Agent is among the first films to receive an Oscar nomination in the brand new Best Casting Oscar category. This nomination is most well earned and is my pick for what film should win.
The story is divided into three chapters with an unofficial prologue that is a brilliant short film in itself. Marcelo stops at a gas station where there is a dead body on the ground half covered by a piece of cardboard. Police arrive but they do not care about the body. They inspect Marcello’s car looking for something to charge him with and force a bribe. When they find out Marcello has no cash they settle for his cigarettes and leave. This perfectly sets up the realities of the time and place we are about to see.
There is also, unexpectedly but calculatedly, a storytelling device that introduces a plotline in the present day. It is jarring at first and each time the film cuts back to this storyline it feels something like a commercial break. However, this plotline does provide the conclusion and catharsis. More importantly, it ties the events of the past to the present. 1977 is nearly 50 years ago which is more than a long time to most people, but by joining the story of Marcelo in the past to the researcher today, the film confronts the audience with the fact that the terrible and oppressive past really was not that long ago. It still affects people today and perhaps resonates so strongly because the corruption and oppression feel unfortunately familiar at present. This happened not that long ago, so why can’t it happen again?
The Secret Agent is available to stream on Disney+/Hulu and to rent on Amazon Prime.
Nominees: Emilie Lesclaux, producer
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Cast: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria
Production Companies: CinemaScópio, MK Productions, One Two Films, Lemming Film, Arte France Cinéma
Distributor: Neon
Release Date: December 5th, 2025
Total Nominations: 4, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actor-Wagner Moura; Best International Feature; Casting-Gabriel Domingues
No comments:
Post a Comment