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'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

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Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#51

Post by greiskul »

jsunderland323 wrote: post #48
zemvpferreira wrote: post #36

I found it unsatisfying. Such a strong opening let down by a meandering movie with no payoff. Made all the sadder by great moments and performances spread thinly through the 2-something hours. I remember coming out of the movie theatre thinking there was a really enjoyable film buried underneath the crud if they could have had more restraint in the editing room. To each their own I suppose.

I did too. It felt like there were a bunch of subplots that never ended up tying together. The leg was the most disappointing to me. My take home at the end was that it was supposed to show the audience that the story was recreated from the parts of the story that could be pieced together by the future journalists. Basically it felt meandering because it was meandering to the journalists trying to figure out what hap…

The leg is used both as a urban legend that was told at the region at the time, but also as a metaphor. The surrealist scene where it shows the leg brutally attacking people at night: all the people attacked are prostitutes, gays, etc. People that during the dictatorship the police used to just dissappear, and society turned a blind eye to it.

And it is meant to feel meandering cause that is how this period feels for people trying to study it. There are many cases that we don't know what happened. We just know that the people were killed/disappeared. The perpetrators were never brought to Justice. We are not even sure who the specific perpetrators are in a lot of cases.

This is how the Brazilian military dictatorship operated. There are people in Brazil who want to go back to this period. They say that everything was better. The truth is that a lot of stuff that was bad, was so bad that we don't even have the records to properly reconstruct what happened.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#52

Post by greiskul »

forinti wrote: post #47
knuppar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah suddenly perna cabeluda was cool but it did feel a bit random :p

I interpreted it as people making up stories so that they didn't have to face the truth. Or maybe the newspapers used it to write about things that couldn't be written.

And the people attacked in the weird scene are people that tended to just be dissappeared by police. Gay men. Prostitutes.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#53

Post by estebank »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #50
ubermonkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBAA was technically well executed but, to me, pretty fucking soulless. I haven't seen all the nominees, but the ones I did see -- Train Dreams and Sinners -- were, to our eyes, profoundly better films than OBAA. I'm in particular interested in seeing Hamnet soon; everything I read about it puts it in the same category as TD and S. OBAA was the safe Academy pick, and so that's what they picked.

i thought Sinners was so overhyped. mediocre performances (great music!) and a terrible plot (why were the vampires forced to ask for permission to enter, and then able to storm the building a few scenes later? was there no better way to resolve that then just forget about it) loved OBAA (incredible pacing!) but had its flaws too

> why were the vampires forced to ask for permission to enter

Part of well established lore.

> and then able to storm the building a few scenes later?

Because the wife who just saw her husband killed invited them in because she wanted revenge.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#57

Post by nl »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #7

One thing I noticed is that both this and another incredible film this year, Sirāt , were, at least in part, funded by a grants and state institutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film) If you haven't seen either, highly recommended. Don't watch Sirat if you're wanting a "good time," but I honestly can't think of the last time a film made me feel the w…

> One thing I noticed is that both this and another incredible film this year, Sirāt, were, at least in part, funded by a grants and state institutions.

Aren't almost all films partially funded by grants and state institutions?

For example the MPAA publishes guides like [1], and if you watch the credits of most films at the end you'll see "thanks to XYZ" where it was filmed.

Even if you film in Hollywood itself you are eligible for tax rebates[1]

[1] https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Ol...

[2] https://www.ep.com/blog/california-expands-film-tax-incentiv...

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#58

Post by anderber »

ShamblingMound wrote: post #43

Secret Agent has a slow, difficult beginning (~hour). Not much happens. And it's not clear why what's happening is happening, particularly for someone unfamiliar with Brazil's political climate in the 1970s. As someone who's never been to Brazil, certainly not in the 1970s, watching Secret Agent still felt like being transported there. How did they make a movie that makes you feel like you're in a familiar place you'…

Felt the same as you. It felt like you didn't quite understand what was happening or what was going to happen in the beginning. Only for you to miss the characters by the end.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#59

Post by anderber »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #36

I found it unsatisfying. Such a strong opening let down by a meandering movie with no payoff. Made all the sadder by great moments and performances spread thinly through the 2-something hours. I remember coming out of the movie theatre thinking there was a really enjoyable film buried underneath the crud if they could have had more restraint in the editing room. To each their own I suppose.

Part of what it was trying to speak on was how truth and stories were lost during the dictatorship. What you felt was what a lot of Brazilians felt. Like part of them (or movie) was missing and they'll never be whole.

Re: 'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)

#60

Post by anderber »

next_xibalba wrote: post #35

I watched both The Secret Agent and One Battle After Another (didn’t see any of the other nominees). For me, The Secret Agent was definitely better.

I wonder how many in the Academy actually watched The Secret Agent. I've heard before that a lot don't watch all the movies before making their picks.
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