By Josiah Rodriguez
*This Article Contains Spoilers*
The crackling of a radio hits the air. Two broadcasters begin to introduce a song from the 1960s, reflecting on its popularity among the youth and how the festive band was a celebratory staple of their generation. “Samba at the Arpége Club” absorbs the air, a montage of black-and-white photographs lighting up the screen alongside it. Brazilian couples, telenovelas, and countrymen cut along the moving slideshow of pictures, rooting us within the opening scene of The Secret Agent (Kieber Mendença Filho, 2025): a foundation of memories.
Every moment we encounter builds and builds into a vast collection of a personal timeline, yet for every cherished event, there are also the tiny pieces that get swept under the rug. Memory can be fickle after all. For one person, these unnoticeable details are nothing more than a fleeting thought, already forgotten after only a few hours as they churn along with their personal course of life. Yet to others, these details mean everything. What one might consider nothing could be the fate of another, and it leads to a result that you cannot help but ponder, looking back to see where our memories intersect through what we have inadvertently ignored. Our minds put much in hindsight, and when a person, a family, and even a country deal with this same trait, who is to say what stays remembered? After all, for dust we are and dust we shall return. Where will our lives, our loves, and our hardships lie among the memories of others, if at all? At the end, will the final thoughts of ourselves amount to only the mere sum of an obituary column? It’s an intriguing idea, and with the 2025 film, The Secret Agent, we witness an exploration on the worth of a memory, and how censorship, both personal and political, can rummage its power.
Every moment we encounter builds and builds into a vast collection of a personal timeline, yet for every cherished event, there are also the tiny pieces that get swept under the rug. Memory can be fickle after all. For one person, these unnoticeable details are nothing more than a fleeting thought, already forgotten after only a few hours as they churn along with their personal course of life. Yet to others, these details mean everything. What one might consider nothing could be the fate of another, and it leads to a result that you cannot help but ponder, looking back to see where our memories intersect through what we have inadvertently ignored. Our minds put much in hindsight, and when a person, a family, and even a country deal with this same trait, who is to say what stays remembered? After all, for dust we are and dust we shall return. Where will our lives, our loves, and our hardships lie among the memories of others, if at all? At the end, will the final thoughts of ourselves amount to only the mere sum of an obituary column? It’s an intriguing idea, and with the 2025 film, The Secret Agent, we witness an exploration on the worth of a memory, and how censorship, both personal and political, can rummage its power.
The Secret Agent follows man-on-the-run Armando, trying to escape the country with his son amidst the 1977 Carnival. On release, the film gained a wide appreciation for its meditative yet dense exploration of the past, winning the Best Actor, Best Director, FIPRESCI, and AFCAE awards at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where it debuted. From here, the film went on to win Golden Globe prizes that paved the way towards four Oscar nominations, becoming the second Brazilian film to ever receive the recognition of Best Picture. However, this film is far from a crowd-pleasing genre flick, with the movie devoted to subverting the warming essence of nostalgia and exposing its unraveling flavor. The structure of The Secret Agent contains only the basic skeleton of a three-act formula, for while there are traditional staples such as an inciting incident and a climax, the execution is far from that of a “hero’s journey” archetype. Instead, the movie is framed through a sortation of the past, where each scene is a new memory that builds into unexpected passageways, with the film exploring each thought as one quadrant of a vast portrait. When we meet Armando, we are not introduced to him as a character with obvious goals or as a suave spy akin to the title, but simply as a man on his way to Carnival, with the film only showcasing his layers through mysterious connections and jobs. What he wants, what he’s escaping from, and what kind of man he is are questions that we are left pondering for the entirety of the first half of the narrative, with the movie focused instead on individual, building moments that reveal his later nature. This is due to the unexpected framing device of The Secret Agent, where every scene and event throughout is, in actuality, a representation of files and tapes that present-day archivists search through, establishing the movie itself as almost a highlight album that explores each scene as a separate piece of evidence towards solving a central mystery. Through this lens, the film’s “disjointed” storyline mimics the same movement of remembrance, allowing us to weave through the past as though it was our own. However, the imagery involved deepens this format to more than just a gimmicky design.
The Secret Agent could have just used this structure to add stylish flair, but the direction ensures that we as an audience connect to the exact fogginess that lumbering into the past can include. Kieber Mendença Filho captures the vivid nature of this time by adding hypnotic draws to the culture, designing an outlook of this rugged world where tangents of both visual and story culminate into a vibrant display. The movie uses a slow, deliberate pace to draw us into these lived environments, birthing a lingering presence that makes 70s Brazil a character in its own right through bustles of Carnival fever. With this wild event, the movie designs an authentic energy to the moment through the textures and colors throughout, all while samba music floods the air of the streets to fully sell the experience. It sets an engrossing reflection of the past, furthered through intertwining homages to both popular Hollywood auteurs and revolutionary Brazilian cinema. Using dissolving overlays, split diopters, and wipe transitions, the movie heightens the period by emulating the so-called “Hollywood Brats” of George Lucas, Bryan DePalma, and Steven Spielberg while channeling the Cinema Novo movement, a cinematic expression drawn from primitive violence sparked by hunger between 1960 and 1972 Brazil. By capturing the drive of these popular American filmmakers alongside the raw oppression faced by Brazilian artists, we come to a result of irony, where the two histories juxtapose one another and leave the state of the location as one torn between the mainstream and the underground, with this theme stapled together through the inclusion of the blockbuster classic, Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975). Throughout The Secret Agent, the adoration for Jaws is everywhere, from posters across the city to youth obsessed with its terrifying nature, overcoming the traditional passions of Brazil and showing how the city slips underneath the popular glamour for this phenomenon of a film. It’s references like this that signal where the film will grow in its ideas of distortion. See, the film lingers on the smallest pieces, from a stain on a shirt to a hidden hookup, capturing the insignificant yet humane details that litter the portrait of this designated period. But as a portrait, we understand that we’re witnessing perspective rather than full truth, introducing the unfortunate fact that with the context of The Secret Agent, we’re watching a past struggling against a mask of censorship. As we watch the archivists explore through the files of the story, we aren’t painted a full world to these situations, rather only the preserved pieces covered among the muck.
The Secret Agent portrays how propaganda and popularity dominate and reshape the past, a technique most obliviously screamed through the magnetism of Ernesto Geisel. From 1974 to 1977, Geisel acted as president during the dictatorship of the Fifth Brazilian Republic, a presence that literally commandeers the film on countless occasions. We never know the man, see him talk, or watch him act among his citizens, but instead face his silent subjugation through the camera itself. In each moment where a photograph or painting of this man appears, the shot always pans and zooms directly into the image, proclaiming Geisel as the face of the era and negating the commonality. In the same fashion as history books, where figures of prominence are plastered across the text, the importance of the people is scattered under the headlines, serving as a visual reminder of how we can become entangled and devoured by the past. Geisel’s image is just the surface, however, for there is also that of the mischievous creature, the hairy leg. A local legend found in Recife, Brazil, this mythical body part would hop around at night, attacking wanderers and lovers, serving as a piece of mythology across newspapers and radio shows during the 70s. What separated this from cryptids like Bigfoot and Nessie, however, is this “creature’s” ties to police brutality, often cited as a superstitious coverup towards their acts of murder and rape throughout the city. While we never see pure violence from the police of the feature, the impact of the hairy leg is everywhere, popping up amid crime scenes, murders, and publications to further emphasize the outside look at the subject matter. But here’s the kicker: the hairy leg’s first arrival wasn’t in any normal crime scene, but in a discovery within the corpse of a dead shark. Hailing back to Jaws, the film signals both symbols as two of the various shrouds that suffocate this image of the time. With these motifs, these clever takes on the country’s trials present how distortions of memory can affect our understanding, and how the trends of a time are far more recognized than the underlying depth within.
The film operates as an investigation, the flashbacks ending before we can even experience catharsis for Armando’s predestined fate. Given only the bare truth, we return to the present as soon as the final pieces click, yet while the puzzle is completed, the image it contains is still blurred and empty. In the coda, we experience a conversation between Armando’s grown-up son, Fernando, and one of the archivists, discussing the results and how, even with all the evidence at play, what’s the point? To Fernando, the memories have long been shrouded, his father nothing more than a fleeting thought buried under a lifetime of other experiences. To watch Armando’s journey amount to shrug-worthy effects makes for a terrifying thought to consider, not just in the context of the movie but for life itself, in how easily a past can be ignored. Every human leaves a footprint to recognize, trailing their own individual stories that bring to life the spirit of our species. Every second, a baby takes their first breath while another gasps their last, and in every soul, there is a well of purpose to be drawn. As Armando’s past is dismembered, how much longer do we have before our legacy is buried under the never-ending gloss of our times? By the end, The Secret Agent not only shows how history can be warped but also where our future can lead, and, through the darker cycles of human nature, our present can easily be another discarded past. For Armando, his aspirations were snuffed and buried, yet the film itself still acts as a declaration of hope.
We see these glimmers through the young archivist of Favia, one of the characters through whom we view the film, as she explores the case files of the subject through an investigative drive tied to personal confrontations. Where Fernando’s dismissive nature shows a stance against articulating the past, Favia runs towards it. To her, it’s a drive towards exploring her past Brazilian heritage, motivating her to assemble a new, clearer portrait of history that revolts against the in-place censorship. Through her work, we watch as Armando’s life is reassembled against the strain, placing purpose into his humanity despite the cracks of time. Yes, we watch a film shrouded by corruption, yet we also are able to fully resonate and connect to Armando’s emotions, joys, and struggles, showing how even in these buried revisions, the idea of remembrance will always linger within the human spirit. One of the bluntest ways we watch is with Fernando himself, who Wagner Moura was double cast to play alongside Armando, serving as a literal representation of the past’s survival, and that even in refusal he will never be untied to his father’s legacy. The Secret Agent is a film where we witness history’s desecration firsthand, yet amidst the damage, we are still transported into a genuine past rich with people, passions, and struggle. The memories can be destroyed, but the past is irrefutably solidified, and with the investigation that Favia puts together, we watch a man’s venture obtain the depth and honor it deserves via cinematic form
We see these glimmers through the young archivist of Favia, one of the characters through whom we view the film, as she explores the case files of the subject through an investigative drive tied to personal confrontations. Where Fernando’s dismissive nature shows a stance against articulating the past, Favia runs towards it. To her, it’s a drive towards exploring her past Brazilian heritage, motivating her to assemble a new, clearer portrait of history that revolts against the in-place censorship. Through her work, we watch as Armando’s life is reassembled against the strain, placing purpose into his humanity despite the cracks of time. Yes, we watch a film shrouded by corruption, yet we also are able to fully resonate and connect to Armando’s emotions, joys, and struggles, showing how even in these buried revisions, the idea of remembrance will always linger within the human spirit. One of the bluntest ways we watch is with Fernando himself, who Wagner Moura was double cast to play alongside Armando, serving as a literal representation of the past’s survival, and that even in refusal he will never be untied to his father’s legacy. The Secret Agent is a film where we witness history’s desecration firsthand, yet amidst the damage, we are still transported into a genuine past rich with people, passions, and struggle. The memories can be destroyed, but the past is irrefutably solidified, and with the investigation that Favia puts together, we watch a man’s venture obtain the depth and honor it deserves via cinematic form
When looking through history, the manipulation of memories is akin to an old cassette. The more we wind and relive it, the more tears it can bring forth, evoking new emotions depending on the situation and channeling into something far different than the actual past we once knew. As Armando dissolved, it signals the millions of others who fall to the same treatment, where moments of pain are as forgotten as the next. The tape is weathered, yet because of the nature found in every living soul, the music of the past remains alive, waiting to be discovered beneath the noise.
