THE SECRET AGENT 2025
by
Kleber Mendonca Filho
A rotting corpse lying on the premises of a gas station is being repeatedly attacked by a pack of stray dogs. It is covered by cardboard, but the stench cannot be wished away. Mean cops accost passersby for contribution to Police Carnival Fund but settle for half a packet of cigarettes. A man’s severed foot tumbles out of a dead tiger shark’s tummy. The Police Chief is inconvenienced and called in to investigate. Eventually the foot is extracted and sent for safekeeping, where it is replaced, while the original is thrown back into the river for piranhas to feast upon. This hairy foot later inexplicably goes on rampage in the town of Recife, savagely thrashing and kicking men and women making love in public spaces. Newspapers lend credibility to these reports by printing them in matter-of-factly manner. This causes panic in and around Recife (and Brazil), yet an air of levity and gay abandon surrounds Carnival festivities. Meanwhile, the Police Chief and his acolytes find time to harass a Jewish holocaust survivor confusing him with a Nazi fugitive. This is the theatre of the absurd, the country of the bizarre, the era of tragicomedy.
People accept, people adjust, people survive and people move on. This is how people react in face of repression. Dictatorships crawl into power, launch reigns of terror, target vulnerable groups, especially immigrants, unionists and minorities, suspend liberties and randomness creeps into administration. Disappearing colleagues and acquaintances elicit surprise at first, but gradually this pattern assumes normalcy. People begin to anticipate, “who’s next” and “what’s next”. Those being hunted scramble to hide or get out. Those unaffected begin to aggressively pitch for positions and spoils of power. Vested interests ensure perpetuation of such regimes. Brazil remained under military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. During these two decades, militias, mafia, police and armed forces operated with impunity. Millions went missing and were never found. There were simply no trails to follow.
A Secret Agent (2025, Portuguese) captures Brazilian sunniness with sunshine shots and items painted in yellow juxtaposed against grindhouse stylizing. It tells the story of a disgraced professor on run from sinister forces. It is through him that we get to observe rampant corruption, repression and rottenness prevalent in Brazil of the late 70s. The head of a private corporation had a running vendetta against the professor. Not only had he got him suspended on trumped up charges of corruption but had also taken out a contract on his life. Meanwhile, the professor’s wife had died leaving behind a child who lived with her parents in Recife.
Decades later, a history stumbled upon the professor’s testimonial tapes and pieced together his whole story, involving his underage parents, using some photographs and newspaper archives. His son, raised by his maternal grandparents, finally achieves closure thanks to this research material.
The Secret Agent leaves many ends open with unresolved sequences. The incoherence is perhaps deliberate to express the chaos and opaqueness of the dictatorship era. Bits and pieces stories, incomplete narratives, half-truths, hearsays and rumours are what you can depend upon to get an idea of what really transpired, unless of course you stumble upon some treasure trove of recordings or documents.
I had first noticed Wagner Moura in Elite Squad films. As Pablo Escobar in Narcos, he achieved global cult status. As a beleaguered dissident professor, searching for his dead mother’s identity documents while fighting for his own life, Moura has delivered a peach of a performance in O Agente Secreto. He has already won the Best Actor at Cannes and the Golden Globes and has also received an Academy nomination. I think that either of Wagner Moura or Leonardo DiCaprio (for One Battle After Another) shall win this year’s Academy Award, with Michael B. Jordan, Ethan Hawke and Timothee Chalamet as also rans. Kleber Mendonca Filho also won the Best Director at Cannes. The Secret Agent is nominated for Best Picture, Actor, Casting and International Feature Film at the Oscars, out of which it must definitely win the last one.
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