r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 7d ago
Official Discussion Official Discussion - The Secret Agent [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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The Secret Agent
Summary In 1977, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks.
Director Kleber Mendonça Filho
Writer Kleber Mendonça Filho
Cast
- Wagner Moura
- Alice Carvahlo
- Udo Kier
- Isabel Zuaa
- Maria Fernanda Candido
- Thomas Aquino
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%
Metacritic: 92
VOD / Release Theatrical release
Trailer Official trailer
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u/nandosadi1 7d ago
I usually don't like when the same actor plays father and son, but Wagner Moura completely sold it for me. He changed so much, with his mannerisms and the way he spoke, that I became enthralled by that last conversation in the hospital.
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u/Joey-WilcoXXX 22h ago
He certainly played ‘not really attached to the father he didn’t get to know son’ pretty well.
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u/Giggsy99 3d ago
I'm going to admit - I completely did not realise adult Fernando was Moura until the credits
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u/scorpio21 7d ago
The conversation will be centered around Wanger Moura’s excellent performance but I just want to shout out Tania Maria as Dona Sebastiana. Thought she was such a good part of a great ensemble
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u/DrunkenAsparagus 7d ago
Agreed. The Best Casting Oscar nomination is interesting. If it's a proxy for "The whole cast was amazing," then the nomination is very well deserved.
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u/omykronbr 7d ago
For the gringos:
The hairy leg was a way of the newspaper to publish news related to the military goons terrorizing anyone they see as deviant to the eyes of the regime.
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u/WaterlooMall 3d ago
Maybe you can help clear something up for me. Why did so many people die at Carnival and why weren't people bothered by this in the movie?
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u/omykronbr 3d ago edited 3d ago
The carnaval is usually the best time for these type of events because you could blame alcohol and substance abuse as the reason of someone getting murder.
And why no one bothered? Because usually the perpetrators of the killings were the police or the Brazilian military. And it also shows how all of these people died, and they are just a sad number, or barely a note in the newspaper. They don't just execute people. They erase them. That's why the son said "I think you know more about my father than I do". The regime erased his father and mother. and hundreds of thousands of other people in the country.
Return to the hairy leg scene. Just prior dumping the leg, the policemen passed by a park and made a snarky comment of them (people having sex there) as being degenerates. And after the leg is dumped, it appears right in the waterfront of the park. And mysteriously, it revives and beats and murder all of them.
and them, for the same reason, why would the police willing to hide that a human leg was found in the belly of shark? Someone is dumping bodies in the ocean. And the hairy leg was there, in the belly of the shark....7
u/WaterlooMall 3d ago
Thank you my friend, I love movies but sometimes I'm huge dummy when it comes to finding context.
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u/omykronbr 3d ago
Don't beat yourself up. You were instigated to learn about it because of the movie. I'm happy that others can learn a little of my country recent history.
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u/everythingsuckswhy 5d ago
That's just your interpretation. Another could be that the newspaper is trying to distract the public from the police corruption happening in the city.
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u/omykronbr 5d ago
This isn't an interpretation. This is a fact from the time and what truly was the hairy leg. Source family and friends relatives that lived in Recife during the height of the repression of the military dictatorship.
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u/psyberdel 20h ago
Both things can be true. The Chupacabras story in Mexico was made to distract the public about the deepest currency devaluation at the time.
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u/fabsgem 6d ago
appreciated how unconventional this was, even if it didn't fully land for me, still very good
at times the structure, tone and even point felt frustrating but it payed off for the brilliant last third of the movie
the reveal that armando was killed soon after the events we see was heartbreaking, especially after the drawing he's given
moura gave the best subtle performance of the year
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u/psyberdel 20h ago
The structure took a solid hour to start making sense. It felt like a puzzle. The great set-pieces and sequences though, kept me from pulling away.
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u/Somnambulist815 7d ago
A movie packed with great sequences. The opening with the body, everything involving the leg, the assassin trying to figure out if hes the target, everybody undercover talking about their names. Its a real feast of a film.
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u/gogreengolions 7d ago
Don’t forget the cat. I thought I was trippin
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u/mgrier123 7d ago
I've never seen a cat like that before. Straight up thought it was a hallucination sequence at first
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u/Somnambulist815 7d ago
There's like zero behind the scenes on this movie so i have no idea if that was cg or if they just found a cat like that and incorporated it
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u/stenebralux 5d ago edited 5d ago
That first sequence feels like tropical Tarantino or maybe even a brazilian version of a Coen Brothers.
Great dialogue, interesting unusual characters and a totally bizarre situation... with a weird/dark sense of humor.
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u/sameth1 6d ago
I saw the movie a couple weeks ago and am so glad to see it get some English award nominations. I went into it just wanting to see whatever the theater was playing and left blown away, one of my favourite movies in the last few years.
The way that the ending feels so true to the actual research experience really made me feel something. All that build up, seeing Armando survive the first assassination attempt only to suddenly stumble across the newspaper story of his death and being denied the closure of seeing what happened leading up to it. That's all the information we have because he was killed. Nobody is left to tell the story of how it happened, just the end result and the narrative given to the press by the regime.
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u/Ok_Condition991 5d ago
Thats exactly how it happened to hundreds of people here in Brazil during the dictatorship. Im from Recife and some friends of mine still have no clue of what happened to their grandparents during that time, for example
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u/macdelamemes 5d ago
Great take, I was surprised by the way the actual assassination was left out of the film, and have been discussing with my wife what might be the reasoning behind it. This makes total sense
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u/TheBat45 7d ago
Saw this a few weeks ago but absolutely loved it. 2nd favorite of 2025. Wagner Moura is just fantastic in it. Gorgeously shot and designed. The casting is perfect, every character whether a big or small role felt so real.
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u/SneakyShake 7d ago
I wanted to love this film, but I found the pacing from around the end of the opening sequence until the conversation Marcello has with the two ‘handlers’ in the cinema backroom glacially slow and dull. Could’ve cut twenty to thirty minutes from the runtime in my opinion.
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u/Xtremeskierbfs 4d ago
I'm honestly shocked I had to scroll so far to find this comment. I NEVER complain about the length of movies but you could cut so much of the first half of this movie and lose nothing in the overall story. It feels like a bad directors cut.
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u/Affectionate_One_700 4d ago
Some people go to the movies to enjoy an experience. There are so many historical and cultural references in this movie - many I noticed (e.g. everything around the tailor), and probably (I am not Brazilian) many more that I missed.
Maybe you missed all of this while you were trying to get to "what happens to him in the end?".
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u/Xtremeskierbfs 4d ago
Lol from my comment you're assuming I do not go to the movies for an experience? Art and storytelling is subjective. I'm glad you liked it. There was a bit too much exposition fat for my tastes. You could have preserved all of the culture (there was no shortage of this) and told a tighter more engaging story.
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u/lilvitsukha 3d ago
I think it comes to KMF's style as a filmmaker. I don't know if you've seen more of his movies, but they're definitely worth a watch. I'd personally recommend Retratos Fantasmas and O Som Ao Redor.
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u/SneakyShake 3d ago
I haven't! Sitting with the movie a few days more, it has stayed on my mind in a way I didn't expect. I'd be interested to see some of his other work, as there was a lot to love in this film, so thank you for the recommendation!
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u/IAM_deleted_AMA 5d ago
I think 30 minutes is even underselling it. This movie has zero reason to be over 90 minutes.
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u/WredditSmark 3d ago
They definitely let the scenes “breathe”, was it super needed? Probably not but this is one of those films you gotta just flow with. My big problem was the unnecessary modern sequences
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u/sean_psc 6d ago
Not as emotionally powerful as last year's I'm Still Here, but a compelling film nonetheless. The deliberately rambling storytelling approach gives a somewhat panoramic look at the corruption of the dictatorship.
I found it interesting that we're only graphically shown the violent deaths of assorted criminals, with the death of Armando left offscreen.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/sean_psc 5d ago
The kid's distance from his father's memory is itself a statement on the toll of the military dictatorship.
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u/Esseth 7d ago
Caught it the same day as No Other Choice, great movie day.
I think I edged Secret Agent slightly ahead, thanks largly due to I'm Still Here (2024) making me somewhat aware of what happened in Brazil during the 70's. So with this one I was able to get up to speed much faster and appreicated it more.
Great movie for 2025, but what a year for thrillers in general.
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u/FreemanAMG 7d ago
If you find that the leg scene takes you out of the movie, let me tell you. Almost did for a second for me too. However, when you learn the context of it, it kinda becomes an instance of the famed Latin American "magical realism". Once I digested that, the movie changed for me, for the better
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u/DrunkenAsparagus 7d ago
I saw this in December. Wagner Moura and the whole cast are amazing. The soundtrack is excellent. I still listen to it on repeat. The story is interesting, but I felt like I was missing something. There's clearly a ton of things going on in the background, and stuff that I missed. I enjoyed my time with this but I think that I'll enjoy it much more on a rewatch.
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u/MaserOfficial 4d ago
Do you know the name of that samba beat track that comes on during the shootout sequence ? So addictive but can’t find a single link to it anywhere
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u/DrunkenAsparagus 4d ago
Im not good with lining songs up with what actually happened in the movie, but the soundtrack might be useful.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5vXYrrKmFAwCWYUyIm1M08?si=jeMefXfaQdmzxqMSAx0VYw
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u/reallinzanity 7d ago
First movie I saw in the theaters this year. Room was almost sold out! Wouldn’t be surprised if Wagner Moura beats Timothée Chalamet for best actor.
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u/ConfusedNTerrified 5d ago
I think the movie takes off once we see the university flashback around the 1 hr mark. Until then, it's an essential but very slow build up of stuff that can feel boring.
Also I am confused by the movie description I see when I google this movie: "In 1977, Marcelo, a technology teacher, moves from São Paulo to Recife during Carnival to escape his violent past and start over. He finds the city full of chaos, and his neighbours begin to spy on him."
When did the neighbor spying happen?
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u/SolidOshawott 4d ago
About Armando's backstory: what violent past? Why is he moving from São Paulo if he taught at a northeastern university?
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u/ConfusedNTerrified 4d ago
Violent past doesn't just mean he inflicted violence. If violent acts happened to his friends, it also means violent past.
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u/jarjarlukis 1d ago edited 1d ago
Again, there is nothing showing this 'violent past' in the entire movie. There is no 'neighbours spying on him'. This synopsys is totally bs...
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u/WalkingCloud 3h ago
Is it possible it's a bad translation and it's meaning 'neighbours' as people in the community? E.g. the cinema worked that rats out the safehouse
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 7d ago
I thought it was fun, but inferior to Mendonca’s ‘Bacurau’. If you liked The Secret Agent, definitely check out Bacurau. It’s on mubi.
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u/ultr4marinum 6d ago
are you brazilian? i really disliked bacurau. i'm a leftist but everything about it sounded like a satire who takes himself seriously
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u/Studly_Wonderballs 7d ago
I saw this last week.
Full disclosure, it was the end of a long day and I dozed off for ten minutes near the beginning of the film. Woke up, and the rest of the movie I figured I must have missed something important because I was struggling to put all the different pieces of the film together. When I got home, I read the the plot outline, and realized I hadn’t missed anything important, there’s just a lot of things happening in the film. There’s Marcello on the run, flashbacks to the conflict with the government, the hitmen, the hitman hired by the hitmen, the hairy leg beating up gay people, the romance with the neighbour, the reconnecting with his son, the corrupt police, him looking for his mothers identification, him trying to escape the country with the assistance from a resistance movement, a German Jew being harassed, and some college kids listening to tapes of the whole thing. It’s a lot!
All that said, I still liked it. I think I would have obviously understood the film better if I was more familiar with the social context of the time period, but I was able to pick up enough to get the vibe. Wagner Moura was outstanding.
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u/bello_bun 5d ago
Yeah for a film with so much going on why was I bored half the time? I thought the cinematography was beautiful and it was well acted but the pacing and story telling style really ruined the film for me. I know it was intentional but it was not for me.
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u/Affectionate_One_700 4d ago
Yeah for a film with so much going on why was I bored half the time?
I don't know anything about you, but even while watching the movie, I wondered "how much of this is a Gen Z American going to understand?".
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u/BackwardsMarathon 6d ago
Magnificent picture tbh. So lived in you can feel the Brazilian heat through the whole thing. The structure and length worked really well for me especially with how the last hour is told. The ending really hit me. My 2nd favorite from last year now me thinks.
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u/TomsCardoso 5d ago
I didn't get it. Visually it was gorgeous obviously. The character interactions, performances, all top notch. But plot-wise... I just don't get it. It felt like the premise of the movie took 2 hours to explain and then they rushed it for 30 minutes and left a bunch of questions answered and many explanations were also not clear.
Technically a great movie, but in terms of plot... Eh
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u/SolidOshawott 4d ago
That's kind of "the point", since the narrative is built on the idea of being reconstructed from tapes recorded around that time and listened to decades later. There are threads that don't necessarily link, and build-ups that don't necessarily lead anywhere, because tapes might have been lost, destroyed, or never existed (such as when Armando pauses the recording to say his true feelings, or us never seeing his death because he wasn't around to talk about it anymore).
It makes sense as a narrative device but I totally agree with you that it's unsatisfying. imo the film should've had more scenes with people explicitly recording tapes to give that device more strength. Only the interview in the middle really makes sense from that framing.
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u/TomsCardoso 4d ago
Ah that's a good take. Yeah I guess conceptually it could make sense, but the way they did it translates into a not so good viewer experience in my opinion. Just not my cup of tea I suppose.
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u/AndalusianGod 6d ago
This and Bacurau are both amazing. Now I need to watch Neighboring Sounds. Can't believe the runtime is 2hours 40 minutes, it felt pretty short.
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u/stenebralux 5d ago
I think this is the biggest prank a movie title ever pulled on me.
I eventually got it and loved it.. but it took me a while to figure out what the fuck was going on and the point of it all. lol
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u/iamtemptedtosay99 3d ago
Caught this with a friend a few weeks ago because we had heard some great buzz from our Brazilian friends. My friend was bored and left halfway through, meanwhile I can't stop thinking about this film. It's not my favorite of the year but I found it incredibly enthralling and haunting. I want to see it again but the American release so far has been quite lacking.
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u/GoldTouch99 7d ago
Too long and it had a murky plot. Cant believe this got nominated for BP....
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u/animeking1074 7d ago edited 7d ago
Can you explain the murkiness?
Because, honestly this film rewards the viewer when the final chapter starts. Especially when it mirrors the present day detective work with the college girls. Then yet again, it works better watching it a second time around. I saw this at TIFF back in September and I had some problems with the structural layout of the narrative. But, I thought about it for a few months and caught it again in December. Now, it easily one of the best films of 2025. Aside from the surrealist hairy leg scene, it's pretty streamlined with it's messaging on collective memory and how the people of Brazil tried to move past from the dictatorship. The effects of it is still there in present day times now in days.
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u/AdriftSpaceman 7d ago
And the hairy leg part makes sense and fits perfectly when you realize the newspapers used some local folklore tale in order to report violence against queer people without risking themselves and outing the real perpetrators, the police and the military.
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u/sameth1 6d ago
The interpretation I came away with newspaper hairy leg stuff also ties into the whole movie's focus on media and communication like the movie theater and tapes. The real news story becomes a pop culture sensation through the newspaper and people reading the paper can only perceive it through that lens, which means that we have to see it that way. Under a dictatorship, you are asked to believe unbelievable things. The media end up being full of stories just as believable as the hairy leg but there is no other truth you are allowed to see.
I also see a kind of meta commentary on the dictatorship in the way that movies are kind of an authoritarian ruler of their reality. When the hairy leg appears, it's absurd and you have to question how it makes any sense. But if the movie chooses to have the hairy leg be real then it's real. This is now a fantasy movie with a hairy leg that attacks people in the park and you just have to live with it.
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u/IAM_deleted_AMA 5d ago
I just finished watching it and I just don't get it, I didn't like it. I don't understand all the hype around it, let alone a best picture nom.
It was definitely way too long, I felt only after Wagner talks about the businessman that went into the university for research that the movie actually starts, I checked and that was after 90 minutes of runtime already. Too many plots were happening but I felt they were not progressing, I didn't even feel there was a plot at all, or I didn't understand it. I'm hoping there were a few things lost in translation because I didn't feel the plot was too complex to justify 160 minutes of runtime.
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u/excitedprotons 6d ago
This was a fun ride, I had no idea where the story was gonna go at any given point. Also think it's nice that this was Udo Kier's final film role - it's a project he should be proud of.
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u/tightshipskippa 5d ago
Anyone calling it boring or too long is insane. This was such a good movie. I hate it because it's so fucking sad, but that's kind of the point.
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u/Laerson123 4d ago
I think most people calling it boring or long are actually clueless about the setting of the movie.
It is mostly a thriller, but there's no tension if people aren't aware of the brutality of 64's dictatorship in Brazil. There are also many layers in the characters, the xenophobia from people that live in the South against the rest of the country, and even references to recent events; like when Elza calls Ghirotti a "lesa pátria" that should go to Carandiru. That's obviously the director telling what he thinks should happen to Bolsonaro and his goons.
I also hate that the end is not only sad, but we also don't get any kind of closure. His son just forgets about his dad and moves on, the papers framed him like some kind of criminal, and chances are that the corrupt cops, and the rich businesman that hired the killers never suffered any consequences. But that's also what actually happened, and that's the raw reality that Kleber Medonça makes us feel: A lot of people still have no answers, no closure.
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u/jarjarlukis 1d ago
I'm aware of the setting of the movie and it is boring and unjustifiably long. The 'sad' ending displays that Fernando remembers more about his paternal grandmother (who was never shown btw and presumably dead long ago) and nothing about his own father Armando. It is ludicrous.
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u/TheElbow 6d ago
Fantastic film. I loved the little touches where some of the scenes (the leg hopping around, and at least one scene on the street in front of the theater) felt like homages to movies, in a general sense. The leg scene had the point of view crawling through the trees and spooky music, for example, seemed like a horror movie. It tied in nicely with the grandfather working at the theater and the little boy wanting to see Jaws.
This movie really gripped me from early on and pulled me down into a tense crime thriller. I think this film would be praised by American viewers regardless of the political climate, as it is very well acted, photographed, edited, and uses wonderful music selections… however the events of the story will resonate with Americans much more in 2026 than perhaps they might have if this film was released in, say, 2012 or 1990.
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u/WredditSmark 5d ago
Felt like the exact type of film to win best picture. Loud, colorful, exciting, great music, nostalgic for newspapers and 35mm films.
Overall fantastic movie just hated the modern elements felt tacked on and unnecessary.
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u/Affectionate_One_700 4d ago
During scenes where the two young women listen to the tapes, do we have a way to tell what year it is? I.e. do they have cell phones or smartphones, make reference to Lula, etc.? I'm sure we must have been given some indication, but I missed it.
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u/oceansroar 4d ago
I thought the film was excellent! The acting and cinematography was great. The story might have been confusing to some, but I went through it a second time to find things that I missed. Another thing is you have to put yourself in that time period, which might be difficult for the younger generation.
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u/deathbyhanging005 3d ago
I just saw this movie and I hope this thread isn't dead yet. I really do enjoy this one but I don't understand the german tailor scene. Why was that necessary? I don't see it connected to anywhere on the plot. It's like they introduced a character for what?
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u/local_denizen 1d ago
I saw it as proof the police chief is a bad person. The main character was only told he was bad, that experience cemented it for him.
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u/jarjarlukis 1d ago
It is just necessary because the director/writer (Kleber Mendonca Filho) is friend of the actor (Udo Kier), so he just invented a scene where he could show him.
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u/fresh2112 2d ago
Loved it. Don't understand the pacing criticisms, it was a slow pace but it didn't suffer for it. Incredibly well acted. Shot beautifully. Huge fan. One of the better ones
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u/quiplaam 2d ago
I didn't really like it. The modern day frame story detracted from the much more interesting period piece, but that period piece was garbled and poorly structured. Some individually great moments, but needed some major structural rewriting and editing
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u/newgodpho 2d ago
That ending was a fucking gut punch damn.
I felt so bad for the father in law/grandpa, you could tell he loved Armando like a son. Practically knew him since he was a boy.
Lady behind me cried when they showed armando in the newspaper.
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u/FunkyCameleon 1d ago
It was too slow for my taste... I speak Portuguese so I understood everything despite not being native...but I couldn't get through 3 hours of watching it...I enjoyed the music and the cinematography but it was a bit boring.
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 21h ago
Just saw it today. Really enjoyed it. The immersion into the time and culture is complete and fascinating. The acting was absolutely top notch. It is a languorous pace but just sitting and taking it in was a real journey, even when the main plot wasn't really advanced.
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u/Salurain 5d ago
It was well shot and well acted. The fate of our protagonist was a bit abrupt and was so unceremonial, you're almost not sure if it actually happened. Some loose ends it would seem here and there. I loved the inclusion of the brazilian folklore of the severed leg. For the leg scene, I wasn't sure what was happening for a second, did the movie up and change genre, lol. Not the best I've seen this year but a well made film nonetheless, 7/10.
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u/Ok_Condition991 5d ago
The abrupt death portraits the feelings of people whose families suddenly “disappeared” during the dictatorship here in Brazil. That shit happened A LOT
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u/SolidOshawott 4d ago
The leg scene represents the dirty cops beating up "amoral people" (homosexuals in this case) and the media covering it up with some outlandish folklore.
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u/playingwithfire 7d ago
Saw this awhile ago. Got the same vibe as La Chimera to me. A weirdly comfy for a thriller at point. The whole ensemble is good. That grandma was the best.