Wagner Moura received his first Oscar nomination for portraying Armando Solimões aka Marcelo Alves in The Secret Agent.
The Secret Agent takes place in Brazil during the military dictatorship as we follow one targeted man trying to survive in the regime and escape to safety.
Wagner Moura joins the small ranks of actors nominated for a wholly international non-English Language film, interestingly with many companion qualities on the surface to Leonardo DiCaprio’s nominated work, though stylistically very differently as he also plays a man who goes into hiding with technically an assumed name after losing the mother of child. Although beyond the description this is a very different performance and for much of the film his performance very much is bringing to life the reality of the situation, which is an interesting aspect given many aspects of this film have a degree of surrealism from director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Moura’s performance is distinctly and often subtly about dealing with the reality of the dictatorship very much as an anchor point. An aspect established in his first scene where he stops at a gas station seeing a dead man just lying on the ground, from a supposed failed robbery, meanwhile the cops stop by at the same station not to take care of the body or even address the robbery, rather to just hector Moura’s Armando a bit and steal what bit of money he has. Moura’s performance captures the reality quite effectively however as a man who has to keep together and find a way to exist within the pressure that if he showed too much sympathy he’d be in trouble with the cops. Moura’s performance is able to express the quiet dismay at the police but also his eyes show a greater distress in seeing the body so carelessly kept rotting away in the sand.
We follow Armando as he goes to Recife and lives in a refugee apartment essentially along with other refugees run by the idiosyncratic Dona (Tânia Maria). There he catches the eye of Claudia (Hermila Guedes) with whom he quickly begins a sexual relationship. An aspect where I wouldn’t describe it as a romance rather kind of empathy understanding of time and place. Where Moura doesn’t suggest some switch to a new love but rather just the innate attraction to a beautiful woman and an understated yet still palatable connection based upon their mutual situation. We follow Armando as he reconnects with his son Fernando, a kid who due to his age is more interested in seeing the movie Jaws than is really all too aware of all the present situations. Moura though is quite effective in creating the natural sense of the relationship between the two. You see the sense of unqualified love for his son, and really the attempts at bringing just a bit of levity as the dad trying to be the fun dad even though he’s in a circumstance that really prevents him from being the dad he’d like to be. Moura playing the levels where you sense his want to just be there for his son so purely meanwhile having the emotional struggle of the death of his wife and trying to speak to his son about the situation in as calm of a way as he’d understand.
His son is currently being watched by his father-in-law Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco) who runs the local movie theater. We get another relationship between the two that is rather interesting as Moura in part has moments of a better sense of history as he can’t help but bemused by a woman possessed by the screening of The Exorcist, and we get the connection the two share in their mutual love for Fernando. There’s a complexity though where Alexandre questions if Armando cheated on his daughter while they were married. Moura plays the moment in a very fascinating way because he doesn’t definitely answer the question yet he gives a complex response. Where you see a certain defensiveness, also shame, however not shame of necessarily a cheater but rather just a man feeling guilt over his deceased wife in general. Moura creates the sense of really how much he did love her yet still presenting some conflicting feelings of how he failed her in some ways, which is left open to interpretation though I took it more of his failures to protect her. The common trait consistently in this moment as we get in so many moments though is of creating such a remarkable detail in a man who in a way we only get a brief glimpse of yet Moura intends to tell us a whole life.
A lot of Moura’s performance is reactionary despite being the lead yet that isn’t in any way a criticism or a limitation. Rather Moura takes into the details of his world by conveying it through his powerful eyes of watching the world around him. As we follow him as he has a job setup at archives, where he intends to find some kind of documentation on the life of his own mother while also avoiding the law, unfortunately the corrupt police chief occasionally uses the building to look more official and is stationed nearby. Moura’s performance takes it all in quite naturally where we get his bits of bemusement at coworkers being attracted to him, his quiet concern but also befuddlement at seeing the sloppy yet oppressive operations of the police near him. Moura in each beat manages to highlight the humanity of the situation by so empathetically conveying what he’s going through in this curious state. A state that isn’t all sadness, there’s moments of joy but it is also just a constant struggle. A struggle that gets greater because the police chief takes a liking to Armando, much to his own chagrin. Moura’s terrific in his finding the face of a man just going along not to upset the chief, who likes to go around hassling a local German mainly, and seeing the understated disgust he manages to hold behind it all, with a bit of concern for his safety. Moura’s performance works very much in the margins here and brilliantly so as we very much live within his headspace.
We eventually learn what is behind this whole situation and what is really going on in the deep recesses of Armando’s mind when he meets with a resistance group attempting to help him while also documenting his story. This is one of Moura’s most expressive scenes and he does not waste it as Armando begins to speak of how he got here due to his former days as a college professor where his views contrasted heavily with a visiting powerful executive Ghirotti. Moura’s delivery of explaining that he’d kill the man with a hammer is so powerful because he's been such a normal calm guy before this point, but also we see just how much pain from the past is in this single statement. Pain from the interaction we will soon see but also pain for what this man represents to him. We see in flashback a bit of a different man in Armando, and not just the beard. Moura shows an interesting alternative of the man in a way seemingly weighted by his own political passions a bit more in his interactions with the man where he makes it quite openly clear in his reactions even when he doesn’t say it. Moura shows the man ready to make a statement even if he keeps a certain fitting college professor's dignity in these moments. There is also less of a sadness about him given his wife is very much alive, and while the focus of these scenes isn’t strictly on their relationship the two performers quickly, without any fuss, grant you a sense of their ease together.
Within the flashback you see as Armando makes his disagreements with Ghirotti known with an academic but still passionate candor. Unfortunately Ghirotti doesn’t take it as a respectful disagreement as he, and his equally horrible son, continue to prod Armando and his wife, and so far as to make it wholly personal leading to a physical confrontation. Moura in the scene projects directly his support and care for his wife, and the quiet disgust of the man. The reaction though is of someone with certainty of their belief but also levity of believing that they express themselves freely. Ghirotti however doesn't allow that as he has hired hitmen to kill Armando’s for the disagreement. Back to the present Moura’s reaction is outstanding where we see his genuine disbelief that anyone would go to such a measure mixed within the existential horror and a degree of just being lost in how his world could suddenly come to such a strange place. The group leaves Armando with the warning and the promise of escape however only after a few days. Where Armando continues to try to exist best he can. Where we have a great moment where he and the other refugees bond over their situations. Moura’s delivery of his situation as a man marked for death is amazing because there’s so much sadness to it, a bit of almost comic reaction to the ridiculousness of the idea, but also the painful glint of hope as he shares his struggle with others in a similar situation with such sincere warmth.
We follow Armando through one more day which begins with a nightmare where he sees different aspects of his life with the reminders of the death threat and Moura’s heart wrenching in his awakening as he gives the most potent reaction in the film. As Moura isn’t just a man waking up from a nightmare, there’s all the pain and fear he’s going through, all releasing itself as he screams without conscious control. Armando continues on however as we see him going about still trying to find the document on his mother to prove her existence, where Moura’s simple yet profound delivery emphasizes just how much the document means as a memorial to her. We also have a truly moving moment where his father-in-law comes to show him a message from Fernando that essentially says he wishes to live with his dad. Moura’s understated reaction of just deep affection, sadness but also love is just so beautifully rendered in seeing how much joy Armando gets from his son wanting to go with him. In the reaction Moura conveys both the sense of love for his son but still the stinging loss of his wife and really his family from the circumstances he lives in now. Speaking of the circumstances, unfortunately a hitman shows up eyeing Armando, where Moura’s performance suddenly becomes the lead to the thriller that the name of the film might suggest. Where Moura takes you through every emotional beat as he keeps the calm manner yet in his eyes you can see the intensity of his anxiety, which he attempts to alleviate by asking the corrupt chief for help. Which results in a bloody gunfight between the chief’s men and the hitman, which Moura’s reactions again are so key in embodying the horror of the moment, though also that they need to survive. As he makes you feel every step of his throughout the scene building to the pressure of making the call and pleading to make his escape.
The film abruptly cuts to the present day where we find researchers uncovering Armando’s sad story that ends like Llewelyn Moss in No Country For Old Men, with an onscreen death. Which in a way reflects the real purpose of Moura’s performance which is to make you fully understand this life, the fears, the loves, the moments of happiness, just the moments of observation and understand the loss of a single life within this cruel system. BUT, Moura also plays one more part as he also plays the older Fernando in the modern day, now a doctor who speaks to the researcher for a bit. It’s a brief secondary performance, unlike Jordan though it is interesting that he connects to another lead from this year, where Moura doesn’t waste the opportunity to present a very different man in Fernando. He doesn’t simply make him the father, we see the son with a different timbre of voice, different physical manner and just spirit. Not in an overly showy way but a way where you accept him as the son not the father. His scene is brief but well observed where Moura’s delivery offers a combination between a nostalgia for the joy he can feel from the time and the deep existential sadness connected to the fact that he has no conscious memories of his father. Moura’s very moving because you just sense the wishes of having been able to know his father but also the calm acceptance of the man now living on with the blunt truth that Armando is a memory he’ll never have. Both performances offering a beautiful testament to a central idea of the film, of the importance of a single victim and how it echoes through time.
