A man on the run, hitmen, a corrupt legal department, a leg found inside a tiger shark: all features that would fit right at home in a traditional spy action thriller. But Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film isn’t quite that. Those familiar with Filho’s Bacurau (2019) may expect this to be in the same vein as that sun-soaked violent thriller, and while it is both sun-soaked and occasionally violent, The Secret Agent is burdened by reality. A spy action film, the type that plays in the theatre Armando’s father-in-law operates, the type his young son might watch as he continues to beg permission to see Jaws (1975), this only wishes it could be. It would be easier to exist in that type of fantasy. Instead, Armando (Wagner Moura) knows he’s likely on borrowed time, running from the very real authoritarian regime that plagued Brazil in the 1970s. A widower, a father, a noble former professor, all things better attributed to his character than a “secret agent”. 

Armando, undercover as “Marcello”, hides out with other refugees in a safe house run by the kind, elderly Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria). His wife Fátima (Alice Carvalho) has since deceased, supposedly of pneumonia. His father-in-law, Sr. Alexandrre (Carlos Francisco), is left in charge of taking care of his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes). The head of a power utility company, angry with Armando for refusing to donate his research to the government, hires hit men to take Armando out while Armando is offered protection working for the social registration archive in Recife. There, he relentlessly searches for personal information that would provide closure to a lifetime mystery. 

As horrible crimes commence around Armando’s situation, aided by the police, enabled by the militaristic government, the truth also begins to be obscured and twisted in the press, with the public treated to a work of fantasy and that’s only a fraction of where the purpose of The Secret Agent begins to take shape. The importance of fact, the importance of documents, the importance of physical media, all that which can be scrubbed away with time, washed back into the deep ocean like a small shell, lost forever. 

Due to the capabilities of technology today, we are blessed to have past information at our fingertips and to create new information instantaneously. History is made known to us by the spare proof it leaves behind and within Armando’s situation, any piece of evidence that can be preserved ends up being far more important than even he realizes, otherwise it could be evaporated into existence or twisted into a fictitious urban legend. The film’s final sequence, a stunning example of how the past can be forgotten after it’s evolved with the future, is deeply resonant and oddly hopeful.

Wagner Moura shines as Armando, instantly likable, desirable to look at, but masking so much paranoia behind his cool, collected eyes. The film rests on his shoulders, keeping us pulled into his emotional orbit like a magnet. The warm relationship he shares with his only son Fernando is both charming in its dynamic and aching in its brevity. Armando knows the longer he spends time with his son, the more in danger he puts himself in.

Filho’s script is incredibly dense in its balancing of characters, side plots, and allusiveness of the truth, but running deep in its veins is the beautiful theme of preservation. He injects this slow-burn narrative with a gorgeous use of 1970’s cinema techniques like editing wipes, Panavision cinematography, split diopters galore, and a stylish old-school opening and ending credits sequence. Cinema is a safe space and Filho’s love for cinema is all over this film (a cinema is used as a literal “safe space” for its characters) and with it, conserving the beauty of specific artistic styles of the past . It becomes a fascinating comparison, exploring the preservation of historical truth through fiction with a medium that is always begging for preservation.