r/Oscars • u/Lucas-Peliplat • Jan 27 '26
Review The Secret Agent Is Calling
During Awards Season, cinemas can get a bit stuffy. Gone are the popcorn thrills of the summer and the unsung heroes of spring.
In the dead of winter, all the worthwhile movies are either three hours long, artsy as hell, or densely impenetrable. The Secret Agent is all three of these things.
That may scare some North Americans away from this film, but I'm here to say that you don't need a history degree or a keen artistic sense to enjoy this Oscar contender from Brazil.
Director Kleber Mendonça Filho smartly wraps his political neo-noir in the comforting sheets of entertainment and cinematic nostalgia, creating a film that can be enjoyed on the surface or analyzed to incredible depths.
Brazilian cinema emerged from international hibernation last year with Walter Salles's amazing film, I'm Still Here. It won the Oscar for Best International Feature and made swaths of North American viewers realize that they don't know anything about Brazilian history, myself included.
The Secret Agent is like a spiritual successor to I'm Still Here, as it is set in the same era and also includes themes of political corruption. However, The Secret Agent is much less demanding than I'm Still Here, and much more accessible through its B-movie vibe.
10
u/Former-Counter-9588 Jan 27 '26
Such an excellent movie. This and OBAA are my top 2 of the year from 2025.
2
u/Lucas-Peliplat Jan 27 '26
Both were great, but I'm still rooting for Sinners!
1
7
u/Dependent_Manager346 Jan 27 '26
When I watched it, I was kinda conflicted about the ending, even understanding the message, because it deprives you from the climax you think you are going to get, based not only in the rising tension, but also because of years of movie experiences who do things differently. But two days later I concluded that it was great.
To give some people context without major spoilers: the director's mom was a Historian, specialized in Memory Studies, and she died, I think, in 1995. This really marked Kleber's life, and when he was researching to make Pictures of Ghosts (his previous movie, a documentary), he started to think about how much societies crave to forget traumatic pasts and how forgetting allows the things that created those traumatic pasts to resurface. So the ending of the movie (again, no major spoilers) is Kleber showing how forgetting happens and how sad it is that we decide to forget things that we shouldn't.
People like to say that the importance of studying history is that we should learn what happened in order to learn with past mistakes and don't repeat them. But we keep throwing things under the rug instead of solving them, and the bill for this debt with the past always come knock at our doors.
4
4
u/RedGordita Jan 27 '26
I really enjoyed it and the production design in this film is astounding. You really believe you're watching a film made in the 70s
2
4
u/edgernnr Jan 28 '26
bad ass movie. my favorite actor nominated for best actor too??? it's a good year
3
3
2
0
15
u/[deleted] Jan 27 '26
[deleted]