It’s 1977, the “time of great evil” in Brazil, and in the first minutes of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s song “The Secret Agent,” Marcelo (Wagner Moura) appears on the run. You drive in the scorching heat, the hint of Carnival on the edge—and the looming threat of violence. The body outside the gas station has been cooking in the sun for days, whose name has not been released with a gunshot wound to the face, with cardboard covering it, and its complete lack of interest in the police. On the other hand, Marcelo catches their interest immediately, and we can see that he doesn’t care about the attention. Are you an opponent? A criminal? A spy? A communist? In fact, the state police don’t really care, as long as they send a donation to the “Carnival police fund.” He is just another person to scare.
Our character’s interest never leaves the gas station corpse, though. Even as the station’s host confirms that it has nothing to do with him, something in Marcelo’s gaze tells us that it is happening. Corrupt police are one thing, but this blatant, brutal abandonment of life is a sign that at this point in Brazil’s history, the ultimate punishment is not just your death, but the end of your existence.
The events that follow in “Secret Agent” plunge us into the confusing political race that its title suggests. Conventional but colorful encounters abound: corrupt community police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes) and his skull-cracked sons; corpses dumped in the river under the cover of night; pay phones and telephone lines with interference; fake passports; hitmen; sensational newspaper articles; then split diopter shots as the characters anxiously look over their shoulders.
And then, in the middle, something changes, because these subtle signs are not the story of “The Secret Agent.” Marcelo—whose real name is Armando—isn’t the case, either. Not really. Midway through, we are suddenly introduced to a present-day university archivist, Flavia (Laura Lufési), who is trying to understand the past from what little memory remains. Little by little, “Secret Agent” becomes Flavia’s story.
Filho’s filmmaking work is a lifelong investigation of memory, a very clear interest in the “Secret Agent” drama’s predecessor, “Ghost Images.” The essay film documents the history of Recife (the capital of Pernambuco, Brazil) and its movie palaces as an infrastructure of memory. For Mendonça Filho, this is personal; the home featured in many of his films is a document of his mother, a destructive historian who literally changed the shape of the apartment over the decades. Mendonça Filho’s neighbors appear as extras in his films, and the streets of Recife often form his settings. Recife is where “Secret Agent” takes place, and the movie is steeped in the city’s history and culture (the soundtrack, for example, includes several tracks from Recife singer Lula Côrtes’ 1975 album “Paêbirú”).
“Secret Agent” also focuses on the dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, which was rarely directly acknowledged, but consistent in its depiction of the period’s state-sanctioned violence. This film is Mendonça Filho’s attempt to prevent his country—and the world—from forgetting this historical moment. But the film is more than just a reminder. “Secret Agent,” apparently, is a film that deals with the persecution of people through authorization as a platform that documents, preserves, and interprets collective memory.
Holding Memory Objects
Almost all the personality traits affect Armando: He is a researcher at a public university, the widow of a teacher, the son-in-law of a projectionist, a recipient of public funds, the subject of yellow (bile-colored) journalism, and briefly, an employee of the municipal recording room. History will not remember him as a freedom fighter against the dictatorship of the Brazilian military—so why is he being hunted like him?
The incident that led to Armando’s prosecution is a dispute over the years with Henrique Ghirotti, an energy official who will benefit from the government as the government pursues its business and development programs. Ghirotti’s violence begins as a rule. He cuts university funding and lures researchers away from the private sector until there is nothing left of the work of Armando and his colleagues. But what is implied is that it costs Armando’s wife, Fatima (Alice Carvalho), her life (and it will cost Armando in the end) that they are witnesses to this abuse of power, and will not submit to Ghirotti’s narrative. If it weren’t for the archived recording of one wealthy dissident (Elza, portrayed by Maria Fernanda Cândido), Armando’s faithful memory would not exist at all.
Those tapes are just an example of the visual memory that hunts for a movie. Throughout, the characters share photos, records, newspapers, and written notes. Memory is in the DNA of these things. The image is printed with the light that came from Fatima when she was alive. A vinyl record within the grooves of all the little sounds that make up the rich melancholy of “Retiro: Tema de Amor Número 3” (something you can hold, unlike the rocking radio waves that broadcast Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”). Films produced by Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco) at Cinema São Luiz has a millisecond of life in one frame (and, if you’re one of the paranoid audience members watching “The Omen,” you might even think they have the Devil).
These are also objects that can be used and destroyed, erasing the tangible as something that holds a memory. One of the most impressive sequences in “Secret Agent” is based on a real Recife urban legend—“Hairy Leg.” But while “Hairy Leg” may have been an obvious code for police misconduct, in this film, sensitivity is all that is needed to make the violence against the bullied communities an interesting sight for the passengers who torture the phantom leg. “Hairy Leg” becomes an ongoing story, whether it’s true or not.
As we move forward in time, we come to understand that Flavia and her peer, Daniela, are the generation left to consider the effects of the dictatorship on the people. The power that should dominate Armando’s narrative. Before the discovery of Elza’s tapes, the only remnant of Armando’s life that had been saved was a paper tape that painted him as a corrupt researcher who squandered public money. On the side of the story is a clear picture of his murdered body. Armando’s memory of the saved world was false.
It is only through the processes of preservation and preservation—which is possible because of wealth—that a small part of Armando’s honest life is allowed to remain in Flavia. Elza’s dedicated archive of tapes document the violent ugliness of those days in Recife. Flavia and Daniela may have the thankless job of writing these tapes, but they also become carriers of history. Then, naturally, Brazil’s politics of remembrance must intervene. The tapes were deemed “too sensitive,” abruptly withdrawn, and the documentary project shut down. Decades later, humanity is still a threat to power.
History Will Not Die With Us
Memory will live on in some form through oral tradition. Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) might as well be a lockbox full of unwritten memory. His employers are all subject to prosecution in one way or another and thus remain anonymous for protection. Their names cannot live safely. Although the circumstances of some of the characters are apparent—for example, Thereza Vitória and Antonio (Isabél Zuaa and Licínio Januário) are refugees from the Angolan Civil War—for example, it is not clear what makes these characters arrive at the same place at the same time. The only light in their lives is Sebastiana, as she bears silent testimony from witnessing the war in Italy. But without some form of preservation, these memories will eventually become twisted, hard, and faded.
At the beginning of “The Secret Agent,” Armando has the opportunity to spend time alone with his young Fernando. They talk about Fatima and what it means to die. Although they are just two in the car, Armando reminds his child that he is with them because they carry his memory. Sadly, this does not stop his son from admitting days later that he is starting to forget him.
As Flavia learns, the older Fernando (Moura) has forgotten his father. Whatever devices Ghirotti and his conspirators had used to erase Armando’s presence were successful as far as his son was concerned. He can’t fill in the gaps between tapes and papers. He shares with Flavia something very close to his father’s memory: Alexandre once described how Fernando waited for his Armando to return the day he was killed. This is not necessarily part of Fernando’s memory, but he says that by having someone else explain what is happening, he “creates a memory.”
Armando’s search for the record of his mother, who was physically and financially abused by his father and grandparents, is an attempt to compose his memory that was withheld from him. Whether it’s because of lack of personality or the general attitude towards women as outcasts, the record will probably never be there, but Armando still wants one thing to be named after him.
Perhaps Flavia’s attachment to Armando stems from the memories she created in several archives of her life—memories that Fernando withheld until Flavia provided a USB of the archived recordings. These memories, like these, are incomplete, hidden from the view of whoever is recounting them. Regardless, Flavia disregards the story Brazil would like to tell about Armando. It’s a small gesture that ensures Armando’s memory lives on.
Preservation Pre- and Post-Google
“The Secret Agent’s” strange (but critical) leap to the present day may feel detached from its pulpy layers, but those scenes associated with the genre represent how one might try to make sense of the incomplete understanding of history with the limited artifacts that remain—cinema flourishes in the manner of the neo-noselbergs of the 1970s and the “Jawselbergs” of Jawselbergs. Armando and Flavia’s arcs are ultimately the same. Even if the threats they face seem to be very different in scale, these threats are the core of the same mandate.
In times of social and political conflict, we often declare, “History will not look kindly on this time.” But how will history remember us if historians are killed? Will Google miss you and me? (Daniela admits that she eventually stopped looking at Armando’s story because it was “pre-Google.”) Who will control our memories? Will we control them ourselves, or will they be in the hands of whoever has the right to rewrite them?
“Secret Agent” is Mendonça Filho’s attempt to prevent Brazil and the world from erasing people like Armando, who were tortured and killed for any perceived opposition to the dictatorship. But the movie is also an exploration of the metatext of relationship and memory that is central to his work. Cinema, as a narrative and visual art form, is an inescapable element of memory. Even (and perhaps especially) when it is unreliable, incomplete, or speculative, it shapes the truth.
The arts and humanities are an important starting point for resistance because they threaten the totality and totality of control demands for approval, which is why they become targets of attacks through funding, censorship, and elimination. As the question of the involvement of art in politics (and vice versa) continues to haunt filmmakers, Mendonça Filho is unwavering in his belief that the two cannot be separated.
In the world of film and in all of Mendonça Filho’s films, remembering is as much an act of resistance as it is an act of love. To remember the lives lost in your home’s dark history is to love your home enough to wish for a better future—to ensure that those lost are part of the living memory of what makes up your home’s identity. Preservation is different from nostalgia. Remembering is not longing for a vision of the past. It is a respectful walk among the ghosts that live now.
