Golden Globe winner Wagner Moura fought fascists in real life. Recent events feel familiar

Last year Brazilian actor Wagner Moura felt he had good reason to be proud of his country. Former president Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to incite a coup after his election to the presidency, was duly tried, convicted and imprisoned. Democratic institutions were working as they should.

“We experienced the same thing in Brazil that happened in the USA,” he says. “He’s an election denier who makes people want to tear down his own institutions. But Brazil was very quick to do the right thing, I think, because we know what a dictatorship is.”

Brazil lived under dictatorship for 21 years, from 1964 to 1985. The film revisits the period from 1974 to 1979, when the country was under the tight control of General Ernesto Geisel, one of the dictatorial presidents. Secret agentThe film stars Moura as a university research scientist who runs afoul of the authorities and is forced to flee the country with his son. His performance earned him the best actor (drama) award at this week’s Golden Globes. Moura, who achieved star status with his role as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series narcosHe dedicated his victory to “those who defend their values ​​in difficult moments”.

The film, written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, was similarly honored at the awards ceremony. The film, which won the Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards for best foreign film, is now choosing to win the Oscar in the same category.

Set in 1977, the film follows university research scientist Armando (Moura), who comes into conflict with executives at the national energy giant who are responsible for his division’s projects. While trying to escape, he turns to the underground resistance movement for help.

Armando is not an armed rebel. Mendonca Filho says he imagines him as a lovable, Jimmy Stewart-style everyman. Adding a professional charm to his role, Moura says, “But this is in the manual of fascism.” You can imagine the students falling in love with him. “The first ones to go to the fire, the first ones to go to prison, the first ones to be tried are journalists, university professors and artists. I think it’s about the truth. We all approach the truth in different ways.”

He says President Bolsonaro and his supporters are willing to follow that guidance. “Crazy enough, I think Bolsonaro is kind of responsible. Secret agent“Kleber and I were very vocal against him, and we both suffered the consequences,” says Moura.

Moura directed a feature film about the guerrilla of the 60s. marighellaIt was effectively censored for several years after the relevant government agency refused to allow its publication. Mendonca Filho was publicly vilified for his criticism of the regime. “So I think this film stems from our collective amazement at a government that is restoring the values ​​of the dictatorship,” says Moura. “It all started with Kleber and me calling each other and saying, ‘What’s going on? How are we going to react to this?’ It started with us saying “

Mendonca Filho’s response was to try to remind his country of what a dictatorship was like. He says he’s surprised to see the younger generation learn from films like this and Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning films I’m Still HereIt’s about a real family torn apart by dictatorship; There were disappearances, torture and terror.

“Brazil has a memory problem, and I don’t think this problem arose by chance,” says Mendonca Filho. “When you see big tech companies forming alliances with governments with authoritarian tendencies, those alliances are no coincidence either.”

They are all there to serve their own interests; inappropriate memories intrude. According to Moura, this memory loss predates the dictatorship; It is a national habit that has drawn curtains over unpleasant situations for centuries.

“Do you know that Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery?” he says. “Colonialism is still very much present in Brazil. [imported] From Portugal and also from the United States. They both viewed South America as their backyard. “When you see Trump invading Venezuela, that’s that old mentality at work.”

Secret agentBut the act of remembering has little to do with the details of policy; Although his portrait is everywhere, Geisel’s name is never mentioned. Instead, Mendonca Filho focuses on the atmosphere created by an ever-present but nameless fear, the absurdities of authoritarianism, and how people support each other to overcome them. His film follows its characters down serendipitous byways within the framework of a thriller; It’s also occasionally very funny.

We first meet Armando at a service station; Here a body rots in the forecourt, ignored by the vehicle owner and passing police because it’s no one’s official responsibility. The police are there to shake down the owner of the house and Armando because he’s there. Little do they know that he is on his way to an apartment block full of refugees from the regime, actually a safe house, and is led by a small, bent-over old woman who has been assigned to hide him. The film turned Tania Maria, who played the rude and gentle Dona Sebastiana, into a cult figure in Brazil; Mendonca Filho, 78, says he needs to be protected from endless requests for interviews.

The world outside their lair is often strange. The late Udo Kier plays a Jewish tailor who the local police chief insists on glorifying as a former Nazi, unaware of the menorah on the mantelpiece. The news is dominated by the story of a shark caught with a hairy leg in its stomach. This leg and its missing torso are capturing the public imagination. Leg is seen bouncing around the park unattended; He enters Armando’s dreams. Meanwhile, the shark is on ice at police forensics. It’s no surprise to see the release of the local cinema run by Armando’s father-in-law. jaws.

Mendonca Filho, who works as a film critic for one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, said in an interview at the New York Film Festival: “The leg is almost like a poetic fairy tale, finding its meaning in politics and censorship.” “The newspapers couldn’t explain what actually happened. That’s why they showed the culprit’s hairy leg. Not the police or the military.”

Moura says journalism’s recent decline is “a very bad thing because it’s not about facts anymore.” Bolsonaro could win an election on the strength of stories no more believable than the hairy legs story.

But neither Moura nor Mendonca Filho wants to make films with corrective messages. “It seems pretentious to say that you can intervene in anyone or teach anyone anything,” says Moura. He also believes that art shapes the world simply by existing. “What would the world be like without Shakespeare? Without Leonardo da Vinci? Without Pina Bausch? I think these artists transformed the world,” he says.

He does his job for himself in the first place. Secret agent It was his first work in his own language in 12 years. “This gave me a sense of something I already knew: The more connected I am to my culture and where I come from, the more interesting I think I am as an artist,” he says. “I’ve seen actors come to the United States from other places and lose their accents and try to be what Hollywood expects. I never thought of it that way. So making this movie and getting this much attention reinforces in me the idea that one’s culture is one’s strength.”

“Art is putting a mirror in front of us. Sometimes the mirror is very smooth, sometimes it is quite deformed, sometimes the mirror is a little crazy, but I believe that we are also dealing with the truth. That is why artists in general are oppressed by authoritarian governments. Because countries do not develop without the concept of culture, without seeing themselves, without understanding what kind of a person we are? Or what kind of a person am I individually? And this is revolutionary.”

Secret agent It opens on January 22.

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