"The protagonist of "The Secret Agent" isn't a secret agent; he only lives like one. The reason for his clandestine maneuvering is apparent from the film's first scene, when he pulls into a gas station on a country road. Before he can drive off with his tank replenished, the police show up. The officers' arrival is no surprise: there's a rotting corpse on the premises. What's surprising is that they ignore the body."
"The movie's writer and director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, crafts a tight story with startling freedom, leaping between characters in order to conjure their fateful interconnections, while giving them all, persecuted and persecutors alike, an identity and a voice. In the process, he brings history to life with bracing immediacy-a feat all the rarer for the audacious twists of cinematic form with which he renders the movie an act of archival reclamation."
Set in Brazil in 1977 under military dictatorship, the film follows Marcelo, a middle-aged scientist who lives like a clandestine operative after a chance encounter at a rural gas station exposes him to police scrutiny. Carnival-era Recife becomes both refuge and pressure cooker as Marcelo hides in an apartment building amid a cast of vividly drawn characters. The narrative leaps between intersecting lives, giving persecuted and persecutors distinct identities and motives. The film renders historical oppression with immediacy through audacious cinematic form and archival-like techniques, portraying how warped notions of crime and punishment force people into flight, secrecy, and moral compromise.
Read at The New Yorker
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