The Secret Agent is in cinemas now. Add it to your watchlist
The wholehearted embrace of international cinema – once largely consigned to its own separate category – has been one of the most encouraging developments at the Oscars in recent years. Since Parasite’s groundbreaking win back in 2020, almost every best picture line-up has seen at least one film in a language other than English compete for the top prize, and that’s the case again this year, with both Norwegian drama Sentimental Value and Brazilian film The Secret Agent in the mix.
The latter of those is, for my money, the best of a pretty stellar crop of nominees in the category. Interestingly, it’s the second film from Brazil in as many years to be up for best picture, following on from Walter Selles' I'm Still Here last time out. And that’s not the only similarity between the pair. Just like that film, The Secret Agent unfolds in the 1970s against the tumultuous backdrop of the country’s military dictatorship, although on this occasion we’re dealing with a work of fiction inspired by the atmosphere of the era rather than the dramatisation of a true story.
The fourth narrative feature from writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho, the gripping, stylish, and at times endearingly offbeat film is built around a quietly staggering performance from Wagner Moura, who is quite rightly up for best actor. Moura plays Armando, a university professor with an initially unclear past on the run for reasons that are gradually and deftly unspooled over a luxurious 2 hour 40 minute run-time that never comes close to dragging.
In the early scenes, he arrives in the city of Recife and adopts a new identity as Marcelo, seeking to evade his enemies while also reuniting with his young son Fernando, who is living with the parents of his mysteriously dead wife. That’s the starting point for a remarkable, profound film that defies easy categorisation and consistently keeps the audience on its toes, offering up a richer range of delights than any of its competitors in the awards race.
From the tense opening sequence set at a petrol station – where a lone dead body lies ominously on the ground – to a riveting climatic chase scene with a memorable instrumental score, the film is dripping with atmosphere and local character. Crucially, Mendonça Filho manages to convey the terrors of the dictatorship and the insidious evils of a corrupt society while also expressing a clear affection for Recife of the time and its ordinary residents, a nostalgia that could earlier be glimpsed in his 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts.
This approach includes a number of dramatic detours that naysayers might argue saddles the film with a lack of focus, but in truth provides a freewheeling looseness that only adds to its transportive power. There’s an entire subplot dedicated to a recent shark attack that eventually leads to one of the film’s most eccentric touches: a fantastic B-movie inspired sequence starring a rampaging severed leg. Meanwhile, Mendonça Filho also includes a touching send off for the late German actor Udo Kier, who previously appeared in his surreal 2019 western Bacurau and has a striking cameo here.
View Green Video on the source websiteThroughout, the film is truly alive to the possibilities of cinema – and it’s no coincidence that Armando’s father-in-law is employed as the projectionist at a local picture house, where young Fernando has become entranced by the poster for Jaws.
One of those possibilities, which gives the film its main thematic thrust, is the vital significance of cinema as a tool of collective memory. Although set in the ‘70s, the film is inspired by Brazil’s more recent brush with fascism under the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, and it seeks to both honour the memory of the brave dissidents whose sacrifices in that earlier era have been scrubbed from the official record and to acknowledge that the only way of facing up to present and future troubles is to address the evils of the past. This aspect of the film is further driven home by a smart framing device that sees a modern day student learning about the activities of Moura's character through audio recordings and newspaper archives, building up to an affecting coda.
From a technical standpoint, The Secret Agent is near faultless, and special commendations must go to cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova and production designer Thales Junqueira, whose work combine to create a ‘70s Brazil that feels richly detailed and bursting with colourful life. Meanwhile, casting director Gabriel Domingues thoroughly deserves his own Oscar nod; every actor, from Tânia Maria as vivacious elderly dissident Dona Sebastiana to Kaiony Venâncio as chilling hitman Vilmar, fits their character to a tee.
It’s the combination of these factors – the political and personal relevancy, the textured sense of time and place, the tremendous character work, the sheer thrilling cinematic verve of it all – that would make The Secret Agent such a deserving Oscar winner. It truly stands apart from the rest of the pack.
Hence then, the article about the case for the secret agent to win best picture was published today ( ) and is available on Radio Times ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The case for The Secret Agent to win Best Picture )
Also on site :
- Utility poles and trees fall across the area after freezing rain
- Ukrainian drone strikes kill two and injure over 20 in Russia
- Cost to US for war on Iran is $3.7bn in first 100 hours, says think tank