I like Director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who doubles up as script writer in AGENTE SECRETO. He pulls no punches when it comes to depicting reality in his beloved Brazil.
Over the course of its 160 minutes, AGENTE SECRETO portrays three men in the Solimões family of Brazil's Pernambuco State who have experienced in different ways the evils of dictatorship, with Wagner Moura delivering yet another magnificent performance as each of those men in their generation.
As other reviewers point out, this is an account of events in Brazil at a difficult time when dictatorship reigned over that marvellous and multicultured land, and Mendonça Filho hides no details hard to admit about one's country.
The dialogue floats from apparently normal conversation among common people to a growing realization that everyone is under threat. Photographs of then Brazilian dictatorial President Ernesto Geisel and other senior government officials hang in just about every office, corrupt policemen give cover to hitmen, welcome bribes and keep breaking the law.
In a film where you also get the amiable soul of Brazilians, the contrast comes from the main villain, the wealthy company owner Ghirotti well played by Luciano Chirolli, who wants university professor/researcher Solimões I's patent, and centralization of the university funding and operation.
That contrast also hits home with raw, at times exceedingly violent action, where JAWS (yes, the Spielberg-directed 1975 film) has a double with a human leg in it, and the supernatural intervenes as that leg suddenly comes alive, becomes hairy - kids laugh about comic pictures of the "hairy leg" in newspapers - and starts kicking people engaging in sex, and other compromising positions. A black Angolan woman displaying an excellent, just perfect diction of Portuguese Portuguese, keeps the residents at Solimões II's place informed about that leg. Why she and her husband appear in the film only baffled me, as they do not add to the narrative or action, other than they fled Angola and are on their way to Sweden.
The animistic, supernatural element also comes in with a scarecrow-like masked man on the side of a Pernambuco country road, which revisits Solimões II in his nightmares.
Add to that a cat with two faces and four eyes, at least two blind. One can interpret that in various ways. I see it as symbolizing the many angles of history and human memory.
Constantly in the background of dictatorial Brazil of the 1970s, the government poses an elusive but real and constant threat to all citizens.
Ultimately, nothing is sacred: two young girls are listening to tape recordings of Solimões II interviewed by a woman called Elza. How and why they have that supposedly personal and secret material, who they are - neither is a relative of the Solimões - and work for, is not disclosed but they have very modern high quality computers, so they are current generation.
A positive note emerges toward the end, with Solimões III at the helm of a blood donor unit, symbolizing the heart of Brazil pumping in spite of all menaces and democratic hiccups.
Superb period reconstruction - plenty of lovely VW Beetles, and other 1960s/70s vehicles on show - only heightens the enormous quality of Evgenia Alexandrova's cinematography, backed by highly effective editing by Matheus Farias and Eduardo Serrano.
I sincerely believe AGENTE SECRETO and actor Wagner Moura deserve Academy Award nominations as Best Foreign Film and Best Actor, respectively. 8/10.
