‘The Secret Agent’ Review

‘The Secret Agent’ is an evocative title, conjuring up visions of well tailored spies conducting high stakes espionage operations in beautiful foreign lands.

And yet Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film is nothing like that. If ‘The Secret Agent’ shares DNA with any spy film, it would be ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, in its unwillingness to simplify its central mystery, instead forcing the viewer to figure out all of the pieces on their own. In its way, ‘The Secret Agent’ is about as audience un-friendly as imaginable. Some people will surely find this storytelling frustrating.

I found it exhilarating, as if I was eavesdropping on a secret conversation, in a secret world that I’m not supposed to be a part of, so I need to lean in to catch every juicy detail, not knowing what might be important or when.

‘The Secret Agent’ opens with the kind of scene that should be taught in film schools. A striking yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulls off the road towards a gas station, captured in a wide shot. The camera dollies to the right as the car pulls up to the gas pump, revealing a corpse in the foreground, covered by cardboard. After talking with the gas station attendant, the driver, Marcelo (Wagner Moura), is about to pull away when a police car pulls in. The police have no interest in the rotting corpse, they are here to search the yellow VW.

Other than Marcelo, these characters and this event have no bearing on the plot to come, yet all of the film’s critical themes are established: mundane violence, people in power more interested in lining their pockets than pursuing justice, and a man trying his best not to take a wrong step.

The film takes place in Brazil, 1977. Marcelo is a man on the run; we don’t know who he is running from, we don’t know why he is running, but he is running nonetheless and the stakes are high. He stays hidden in a safe house for refugees, using an assumed name in a place populated by assumed names, run by the compassionate and protective Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), while he can figure out how to get himself and his young son out of the country.

There is plenty of plot, if that’s what you’re looking for – a corrupt police force, contract killers, a makeshift resistance protecting political refugees – but Filho is less concerned with the individual story than he is the overarching feeling of Brazil at the end of its military dictatorship. Marcelo, as a protagonist, is elusive and charming, yet even the most ancillary characters feel fully fleshed out, as if Filho could drop Marcelo at any moment and follow them through their daily lives, providing different perspectives on this shared world.

The film is told in chapters, with scenes occurring seemingly at random: characters are introduced, some important, some not; events that could be major plot points in another film are used merely to add color in this one. Filho doesn’t draw straight lines between one scene and the next, doesn’t make it easy on the viewer to decipher the sociopolitical web he is weaving. As a viewer, it constantly felt like I was playing catch up, dropping into a lived in world as it is, not as it would be most palatable.

This is the first film I’ve seen from director Kleber Mendonça Filho, and his style is alive and energetic, his camera constantly roving but never aimless, each movement a deliberate expansion of information available to the audience. The use of music and sound, paired with Filho’s deep focus, adds texture to the world of 1977 Brazil, make every setting feel lived in and authentic, while also feeling so specific.

In Filho’s approach to genre, ‘The Secret Agent’ reminds me of the Coen Brothers’ ‘No Country for Old Men’, with both films helmed by directors with a clear expert control over the techniques and tropes of a conventional thriller, delivering some sequences of heart-pounding suspense, and yet also using this mastery to subvert expectations when you least expect it to make grander statements about the nature of violence in an unjust society.

Violence is used sparingly, and yet Filho emphasizes how omnipresent it is in this cruel and selfish Brazil. Marcelo’s eye is constantly drawn to evidence of this violence – a dab of blood on a shirt, some bruises on an interviewer’s knuckles – but for the most part this violence is lurking just outside the margins of the film’s story. And yet when Filho chooses to depict violence, when the guns start going off, it is brutal in its clarity. Skin shreds like tissue paper, blood explodes out of the body, and people watch impassively, like this is just another day.

As Marcelo, Wagner Moura is magnetic, astonishing in just how little he seems to be doing such that it doesn’t feel like acting. Moura has no big emotional catharsis, no dramatic outbursts; he communicates more through his body language than dialogue, and yet his every imperceptible movement feels fine tuned for the character. His subtlety rewards the attentive viewer, who will notice how his breathing changes, how he stops blinking, alerting us to imminent danger. Marcelo is not played as a hero, even as he acts heroic, but as an everyman caught up in unjust, violent times.

‘The Secret Agent’ is a thrilling, perplexing, and surprisingly funny film filled with characters and moments that will burrow their way deep into your consciousness. If you come in expecting a tidy espionage mystery, you may leave frustrated.

But if you approach this film open minded, knowing an expert storyteller and a cast of hypnotic performers will bring to life a world teeming with violence yet not without hope underneath, then you will be rewarded with one of the most stunning, nuanced, and thought provoking films of the year.

The Secret Agent
Rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, language, and some full nudity.
Running Time: 2 hours and 38 minutes

Director Kleber Mendonça Filho
Writers Kleber Mendonça Filho
Stars Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, Udo Kier
Rating R
Running Time 158 Minutes
Genres Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller