With Summer of Sam, Spike Lee suggested that in 1977 there was nowhere crazier than New York. With The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho asks Lee to hold his beer. If you thought '77 NYC was something, wait till you experience the Brazil of that year. In opening text, Mendonça Filho describes that era in his nation's troubled history as "a time of great mischief," and The Secret Agent is a gleefully mischievous movie. Like several recent high profile South American films, including last year's Brazilian drama I'm Still Here, it is concerned with the corruption that was rife under the military dictatorship. But just as Lee did for the bankruptcy era Big Apple, Mendonça Filho displays a fond nostalgia for the energy that can be created by dangerous times. There is much in The Secret Agent that is shocking, and it reminds us of the evil that is allowed to flourish in corrupt societies, but it's also heart-poundingly thrilling.
Wagner Moura has gained much awards attention for his lead performance as Armando, a research professor who finds himself on the run after being the victim of a smear campaign that wrongly outed him as a communist. Armando knows he must avoid the authorities, who consider him a terrorist, but he's unaware that a pair of hitmen have been hired to assassinate him by Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli), an industrialist with a personal vendetta against Armando.
As this is '70s Brazil, Armando is but one of many fugitives, and an underground network exists to aid such people. Armando travels to the city of Recife where he is put up in a safe house run by the aging Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria, not to be confused with the legendary Brazilian singer of the same name). For an unspecified reason, Armando is determined to find proof of his late mother's existence, and so he takes a job at the city's ID card bureau. There, much to his discomfort, he is befriended by corrupt police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes), whose office happens to be in the same building. Armando also makes risky contact with his young son Fernando (Enzo Nunes), who has been taken in by Armando's in-laws following the death of the boy's mother.
Along with Armando's story, there are various subplots. We spend much time with Euclides and his entourage of sleazy reprobates as they abuse their positions of power, along with the two hitmen, one of whom is an old army buddy of Euclides. There is an absurdist subplot involving a human leg found inside a shark, a story the local media latches onto as a way to distract from criticism of the authorities, and which leads to a surreal comic sequence late on. In one of his final roles, the late Udo Kier plays a Holocaust survivor forced to pretend he was a Nazi soldier to stay on Euclides' good side.
At two hours and 40 minutes, The Secret Agent simultaneously zips along with the pace of a manic political thriller while also allowing its various subplots and characters room to breathe. Mendonça Filho constructs nerve-wracking set-pieces to rival those found in a Scorsese mob movie, but some of his film's most gripping scenes are those that see the plot put aside to simply highlight how life goes on in crazy times. Armando's elderly father-in-law Alexandre (a cuddly Carlos Francisco) runs a cinema of the "picture palace" variety, which provides a novel backdrop for several scenes. There is a wonderful moment when a very heavy conversation between Armando, Alexandre and a pair of sympathetic political activists is interrupted by the screams of an audience watching The Omen in the auditorium below, Alexandre's facing cracking into a beaming smile.
Mendonça Filho's filmmaking bears the influence of the cinema of its setting's era, with zooms, split screen phone calls and Hal Ashby-esque sequences expertly cut by editors Eduardo Serrano and Matheus Farias to pop and samba tunes of the era. The Secret Agent reminds us of how blockbuster movies impacted society in ways they no longer do in this era of "content" over-saturation as the severed leg subplot is tied into the public's fascination with Jaws. Italian genre cinema was hugely popular in '70s Brazil, and The Secret Agent mixes Spaghetti Western sweatiness with the anything-can-happen-and-probably-will excitement of Giallo slashers and Poliziotteschi thrillers (we even get a reconstituted Morricone needle drop).
Moura has rightly received plaudits for his lead role, and as Armando he acts as an audience surrogate, as shocked by everything he's witnessing first hand as we are watching this unfold from the comfort of our seats. His performance is the glue that holds all this craziness together, but he's surrounded by equally enthralling turns from a supporting cast comprised of the sort of faces that wouldn't be out of place on 1977 screens. With his Gene Hackman hair, Chirolli is terrifying as a man who knows his power gives him the right to destroy lives. A confrontational scene involving Armando and Chirolli in a café is a masterclass in developing tension via performance. As the seedy Euclides, Diógenes grabs our attention every time he appears, while Maria and Francisco add heart as the adorable Dona Sebastiana and Alexandre.
The Secret Agent is that rare movie where every scene contains some element, no matter how small, that will stick with you. A couple of decades ago it would have been a water cooler movie, the sort of film that prompts viewers to compare their favourite scenes. It's scornful of nostalgia, reminding us of just how cruel the world really was not so long ago, but in its obsession with the impact of Jaws and The Omen, it's also mournful of how we've lost the sort of shared cinematic experiences that once brought us together. Had The Secret Agent been released in 1977, it may well have been an event movie itself.
Directed by: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Starring: Wagner Moura, Udo Kier, Tânia Maria, Alice Carvalho, Robério Diógenes, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Isabél Zuaa
