It’s Brazil’s time now. South Korea and Mexico have been battling for movie supremacy. Romania burst onto the scene a couple years ago. But with I’m Still Here last year and The Secret Agent, Brazil has taken the movie world by force. Whoops, based on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s epic, that is creative force only: no one has been harmed, my bad.
After a very tense trip to just pump gas, Armando (Wagner Moura) returns to Recife, Brazil. Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) gives him a room to stay, before he is contacted by Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) for his latest mission. That latest mission takes him into contact with a cinema projectionist (Carlos Francisco), a corrupt police chief (Robério Diógenes), and hopefully not a couple hitmen, Augusto (Roney Villela) and Bobbi (Gabriel Leone), who have a picture of someone who looks very similar to Armando.
I don’t know where Kleber Mendonça Filho conjured this screenplay from, but it’s one of the best of the year. The opening section sets up the type of movie we’ll be watching, equal parts deadly serious, symbolic, and absurd. The key storylines are introduced like a disaster movie: tendrils that don’t make sense but will somehow converge on each other, with Armando being the gravitational force those tales revolve around. Filho make sure the scope is large but the stories are simple and clear so the audience can keep track of who’s doing what, when, and why the audience should be excited. In each of those threads characters get introduced that pull us in immediately: every minute with chief Euclides, Bobbi, or especially Dona Sebastiana is a minute well spent.
And then Filho dives us deeper and deeper into 1970’s Brazil. The stories ebb and flow at their own pace, converging only when they need to. Filho builds to these mini climaxes each time the timelines converge, like a high stakes recorded conversation in a secret room, structuring those moments inside of his greater tale so the gravity of the situation is not lost on the viewer. Each new reveal resets the stakes for the story going forward. Those mini builds lead to bigger builds; there’s a point where Armando wakes up from a nightmare 2 hours in, remembering the opening scene, that completely blew my mind at how far we had come to that point, a testament to Filho’s storytelling. The third act has both action and story climaxes, so we get to be entertained then realize we got hit with a bulldozer after the credits start rolling. All praises to Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura, the latter giving the performance of his career, utilizing all his skills as a performer to great effect as our secret agent.
Keep the great storytelling coming Brazilian filmmakers! That horrible military dictatorship has been fruitful for sure for great movies. But feel free to lighten the mood too! Maybe a Carnivale dance movie or r rated comedy? Lots of potential there for sure! Obrigado, either way. Can’t wait for the next banger.