THE SECRET AGENT 4K Review: A Masterpiece of Memory and Resistance

It's hard to fathom, even in hindsight, how a film about a dictatorship, its long reach into the lives of seemingly ordinary people, a love of old movie houses and carnivals, and something of an experimental narrative structure, could translate into one of the most critically and commercially successful films of recent times. But sometimes the film goddesses smile upon a filmmaker and his audience, and we get a masterpiece like The Secret Agent, that finds universal appeal in its specific story. Criterion has assembles a wonderful 3-disc edition of the film for its collection.

Kleber Mendonça Filho's cinema has always combined the personal and the political; memory and erasure; the ordinary person versus the tyrant and the evil. The Secret Agent is his most ambitious film to date, and its numerous nominations and awards (including Best Director, Best Actor, and Fipresci Prize at Cannes) speak not only to its quality, but how this specific story of Brazil more than 50 years ago can resonate today.

Set in Recife in the 1970s, this is a story of a man's life in the middle of the Brazilian dictatorship. Marcelo (Wagner Moura) has come to back to his town to reunite with his son Fernando, and as we will learn, give testimony to an underground collective gathering stories of those under persecution. Marcelo is one of those people; he is really Armando, a former university professor who clashed with a too-powerful man. In the days of Carnival, Marcelo needs to tell his story, wants to find a memento of his deceased mother, and must escape before he is killed.

This is a story that sets you as directly in the shoes of Marcelo as it can; we might only slowly uncover his story, but we are experiencing what his daily life has become, and later what it was. As importantly, we see him among the 'ordinary' people of Recife and Brazil: women and men, young and old, born and raised in the country as well as refugees, across ethnic lines, sexual and gender leanings. A ragtag community formed in the roots by those who find each other in this time of strife, knowing what violence might strike, and yet insisting on their humanity through shared love, friendship, music, and joy. 

Make no mistake, the film is concerned with politics. This is 1977, smack in the middle of Brazil's two-decade-plus dictatorship. The opening scene sees Marcelo filling his car's tank at a countryside gas station, where a dead body has lain for days, since the cops are more concerned with extorting bribes from people like our protagonist, rather than doing their job. And when it's revealed that Marcelo (Armando) must flee the country not because he is a revolutionary or radical, but because he stood up to someone with just enough money and power to take out his petty vengeance with a kill order, it shows not only how much ordinary people were targeted, but that no one is safe in a country runs by and for tyrants.

With a city like Recife for inspiration, it's quite impressive how Filho and his team pull off the darker moments. This northern 'provincial' city is full of colour and life, especially the neighbourhoods shown in the film. Like the characters, it's its hodgepodge nature that makes it endearing. Setting the story not only in the middle of a dictatorship, but against the backdrop of the legendary Carnivale means we see how people found their release, and proved that they would not submit to terror, during this terror-filled years. Its gorgeous pastel colours, streets that feel lived in and on, and an atmosphere of being central to this story yet far from the centre of the country's action, gives both a sense of wonder to the tale, as well as a recognition of how Marcelo's story, and of people like him, can happen anywhere.

But The Secret Agent is a film about people: Marcelo/Armando, a man who finds himself in need of disguise and escape, but who has no regrets about defending himself, his wife, and his colleagues against a petty tyrant; Dona Sebastiana, the elderly woman and former communist who runs his boarding house as a refuge and sanctuary; Armando's late wife, who also fought against discrimination; his son, who has little memory of his father and yet still feels attachment; the killers who are after him and the shadow world they inhabit. These intertwined stories, with good and evil and those who exist between, make up a story as complex as the country their lived in.The film shines when Marcelo is among his fellow boarders and they speak of music and politics, or in the streets and cinemas of downtown Recife.

And with the people, comes story and memory, and how these stories are remembered, or erased. As the film occasionally shifts to the present, to show two archivists listening to tapes of Marcelo's interview with a leader in the underground, who is trying to preserve the oral history of her time, we are connected to how sound of that oral history is as much the truth as what is printed in official record, the latter of course being manipulated by those in power. Our memories, preserved in any way possible, fight the power as much as any physical act of rebellion. Filho understands the importance of cinema as archive, and even if the story of The Secret Agent is fiction, its people, their home and their quiet resistance, are truth on film.

Special Features

An advantage of a contemporary film joining the Criterion library is the access to the filmmaker and the film itself. Hence, there are three discs: the 4K, the blu-ray, both with the film, and another blu-ray with the extras. The 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround sound, are beautifully transferred, making the wonderful colours of Recife come alive on the small screen. 

The documentary "The Secret Archive" is a nice overview of the film, featuring interviews with Filho, Moura, other cast members and crew. The film took 10 weeks to film, featured around 70 actors, 130 crew, and 800 extras: this was an urban and period epic in its way, both the film and its story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Further feature interviews with cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova and sound designer Cyril Holtz are must-watches for camera and sound tech nerds; they describe their process in creating the visual and sound scapes of the film, as well as the cameras and mixers used.

There is a great visual essay called "Memory and Time", which looks at cinema as both memory and archive, how it can show both personal and collective truth, become a time machine for those watching in the future. This is complemented by a series of photographs from the 1960s and 1970s which inspired Filho, in everything from location to costume.

Another reason for three discs, not just the log running time of The Secret Agent, but also the inclusion of Filho's visual essay, Pictures of Ghosts. This feels something of a prequel to his narrative feature, in its focus on the filmmaker's connection to Recife, the people and the movie houses of the downtown area where he has spent most of his life, and the community that inspired the look and characters of the film. It's not only a personal story, but a remarkable living archive.

And again one of the reasons why physical media is worth the price: the disc insert is designed like a newspaper. In the graphic design of the text, and in the texture and colour of the paper. The wonderful essay by Dennis Lim appears alongside the discs's credits which are styled as newspaper advertisements. There are even fake ads surrounding them, both related to the film, and perhaps ones imitating those of the film's setting. Lim's essay gives a wonderful overview of the film's political origins and outlook, how Filho weaves the three storylines as one, the importance of memory and archive in states that demand we forget the damage of the past, and the ensemble cast's importance in a film about one man's story.

The Secret Agent will be released by The Criterion Collection on September 22nd.