I’ve been stewing on some thoughts on ‘O Agente Secreto’ (‘The Secret Agent’ for you non-Portuguese speaking folks). I’m just dumping them on a page because, frankly, I don’t have it in me to write an essay-like thing about a movie and I don’t have THAT much to say about it. Mild spoilers, I guess?
For the first two hours of this movie I was entertained, I enjoyed it, I was sometimes annoyed by it. That matters because I wouldn’t want to watch something that makes me feel miserable for two hours, but ultimately this whole part of the movie is setup. It’s only in the quasi-epilogue that things fall into place. The things I thought were lazy decisions (or non-decisions) - Wagner Moura playing to type, the almost unavoidable middle/upper-class point of view any movie from Brazil with A Budget takes, things like that - were deliberate, careful choices that culminate on a single sequence, a single scene, a single dialogue that is arguably the biggest gut punch I’ve ever seen in a movie. A precise, powerful, surgical gut punch, meticulously crafted throughout the rest of the movie, made more powerful by my own cultural background, my own experiences, my own place in the world.
Kleber Mendonça Filho is still to make something that is not at least an 8/10 for me.
Wagner Moura tricked me on this one. It was very “Wagner Moura is Wagner Moura in Wagner Moura” for a lot of it, but every time I started to feel annoyed the dude would just turn the dial and do some incredible acting specifically to spite me. And then we get to the epilogue and in 10 minutes he convinces me he should win every acting award out there.
I saw it at our local arthouse movie theater (with German subtitles!), and it was packed. It was particularly cool to hear a bunch of other Brazilians talking about the movie afterwards.
It should win the Best Picture Oscar, but it won’t. Zero chance.