But that meme also ties in another aspect shared by these Oscars contenders: they’re both comedies. One Battle After Another moreso, but The Secret Agent has a lot of uncomfortable humour. Things you can’t help but laugh at, even though on second thought this is sad and tragic, not funny, but when the film continuously toes that line, clearly it’s on purpose and you are meant to laugh at least sometimes no matter how uncomfortable or wrong it is.
And the film literally starts with the first prime example of that. Marcelo (Wagner Moura) pulls into a gas station in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle, and the attendant comes racing out to stop him, his beer belly flopping around under his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. He can’t go any further because there’s a dead body under a small piece of cardboard, it has been there for days, the police did it so the police aren’t in a huge hurry to pick it up. Finally, as Marcelo is filling up, the police arrive. The attendant points to the dead body, no the police shake their heads, they’re here for the yellow Beetle instead. No real purpose to investigate him, just seeing what they can shake loose from him, bribes, of course.
This is Brazil from 1977 a time when fascism was alive and well. People in hiding, using fake names, hit men employed by the government, and body parts from murder victims winding up in sharks’ stomachs. Much of this is presented as if it is almost unbelievable, but at the same time, possibly the best part of this movie, is how Brazil from that time period is recreated. It looks and feels so accurate even for those of us who don’t actually know if it is, but given the film’s reception from the Brazilian community – it is accurate. There’s a vibrancy to the colours and the music, like the characters are making the best of a bad situation, which they essentially are. Marcelo is on the run, unable to live under his real name, unable to live full time with his son, unable to leave the country, and he just found out there are in fact hit men coming after him.
For most of the first half the film presents pieces of stories. You know enough from the fragments to follow along, you can piece together enough information as you need, but in the second half we’re given one fundamental scene, from many years previously where all of it started, and why things were so personal for our lead character specifically. It’s not just that everything falls into place here but that you realize that Wagner Moura had actually portrayed all of it all along – his intelligence and determination all on his face as he just tries to live and play nice for police officers who would rather see if they can bribe him than move a dead body lying in front of a gas station where the poor owner has to continuously come out to shoe away stray dogs.
It's a quietly powerful film with a captivating lead performance and highlights a dark time in Brazil’s history.
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