Hyde Park Pick: The Secret Agent

Arriving in Recife during Carnival, Marcelo is swept into a dizzying world of colour, noise, and unforgettable characters. As the city’s sights and sounds intensify, Marcelo’s true place within Recife’s intricate web of secrets begins to emerge.

Marcelo is played by Brazilian actor and filmmaker, Wagner Moura, who many may recognise as Pablo Escobar in Narcos. Moura is perfect as Marcelo, both exciting and charismatic in the lead, it’s easy to believe he’s the principled figure trying to navigate national politics whilst nurturing personal connections. That’s necessary here as Mendonça Filho’s film is an exceptional blend of genres, with notes of classic films of the 70s like All the President's Men, which use the high stakes of the thriller genre to explore the serious world of political corruption.

In The Secret Agent the main body to the story focuses on the military dictatorship which ran Brazil from 1964 to 1985 and began with a coup d'état by the Brazilian Armed Forces (with support from the United States) against President João Goulart.

Brazil’s political and social history is a recurring theme running in different ways across all of Mendonça Filho’s six feature films and much of his other work. He also regularly digs into the complimentary subject of remembrance and archives – recognising how critical it is that a society actively preserves both the good and bad facets of its story to craft a better future.

Looking back at some of Mendonça Filho’s previous films, Aquarius explored these ideas in a poetic, vibrantly feminist form. In Bacurau, the crimes against Brazil's Indigenous people are explored in a fierce and violent way. In Pictures of Ghosts – the reflection is elegant, personal and melancholic. The Secret Agent feels like the next step along from all of this work, a comprehensive medley of all the things that matter to Filho, but also that should matter at this current moment in time to us, his audience. This is a film very much about Brazil, it’s history and its present, but it’s also about the global political struggles which we are all living through, and of which the collateral damage is always the most innocent or those endeavoring to do their best.

Amidst these big ideas, these urgent feelings, the pleasure in enjoying the film making style needs to be recognised. The warmth and humour that float to the surface at just the right moments, the exceptional casting - including the late great Udo Kier in one of his last on screen roles - all of this joy in the film making itself. This is a director at the top of his form and my main take away is I can't wait to see whatever he does next because I truly believe he is making films that we need right now. 

The Secret Agent is showing at HPPH from Fri 20 Feb. You can book tickets here.