With a month ish to go (its the evening of the 16th oscars are the night of the 15th early morning 16th here) this is the last best picture nominee i need to watch to be valid for the oscar prediction. The Secret Agent has been a buzz since Cannes so here i am with an advanced preview evening here even though for most the world its been out a while.

Screening was as always filled with a mix of ages. It always is. It wasnt as full as i thought it would be id say maybe 60% full. Its still good for a foreign language film but you know it could have been more.

Trailers, if i had legs id kick you & wasteman which was odd as both of these had already been advanced previews in the last couple of weeks. We also had, good luck dont die & The Bride.

& then the film started… ooooh im so so glad i saw this.

This sentence is going to sound extremely weird if you havent seen the film but the missing leg that ended up inside the shark was an epic metaphor & i am so here for it. Because Damn what a way to sum up distractions around the world at the moment, it just worked so well & the fact that im starting with that proves a massive point to. So its something you all need to pay attention to when you watch this film & yes its set in Brazil set in the past but it still resonates today for sure. What a wonderful way to show how life hasnt really changed for some of us unfortunatly.

(fyi im wrote this before the oscars this paragraph). If Timothee wasnt up for best actor this year, i think Wagner would be winning. He just oozes acting class in this. He steals every scene hes in & makes it look effortless. & i have a language & subtitle barrier to deal with for the whole film. He really owns it in the exposition dump about an hour into the film when you find out why this is all going down. The line about killing the guy & the hammer & gun… that will be iconic for years to come & instantly quotable.

I know a lot happens in the past in this film but there are moments where it goes back further in the past to explain why this is going down, however there is one moment right at the very end of the film, which you have been following students looking into the past which really catches me off guard but proves something very important which was wonderful & i was like hang on why are we stretching it out & then it made perfect sense.

Go donate blood peoples people need it, even just try okay (as someone who is hit & miss as to if they can take it or not its important to try).

This is a very political film, even if you dont read the subtitles you can work that out. From the corruption to the safe houses to the way some people are treated & how attitudes change. You dont need to be able to read the subs to get that, but the more you read & concentrate you realise how full on & brutal this is about certain people in power & how those who stand up for things, even if its something small are often backed into a corner or are framed as the villain.

A film that talks & praises cinema is always going to do well with me. As a cinephile it makes my soul happy, especially with old school cinemas like that.

Everyone he met along the way in this film didnt just feel like they had been added to it. They all had their own little back story & he had an urgency to know who they were & to learn the mutual trust. It felt organic meeting all these people, everyone felt important to the story & that is shown best at the safe house meeting where people are talking about why they are their. In their darkest hours of survival they were all happy to discus up to a certain point.

Did anyone actually really want to kill him? or was it all like trying to kill Padme in star wars as everyone just kept passing his disappearance on to the next person. It was funny. Sad that they wanted him dead for standing his ground but still.

Im glad as an admin person i dont have to archive like that anymore for anything, its very good that this isnt the case anymore that we dont search for records like that.

I loved the style of the film. Obviously the costumes were very much of that era. But the whole vibe that the rest of the town was very much alive & celebrating &then there being this deep story going on behind it all, proves such a point its almost moving. Also his outfit when hes getting petrol is rather well… distracting. Almost distracts you from the dead body thats been there for days which is the whole bloody point that you just ignore it like everyone else.

As much as i praised Wagners performance & yes it was in his native language, it did feel a little bit weird after watching a few foreign language films recently & then then there being a big well known actor as the lead. Im guessing thats my own fault really.

This film gets grim & violent when it has to & is unsettling but it was never for the sake of it, it would have happened like that in real life too. It just suddenly would get dark &turn into cat & mouse & a hope that people would get through it.

I am very very glad ive seen this &now can see why no other choice wasnt up for best picture this year (ive not seen all the other international films as they now call it) but i recon if i spoke Portuguese & knew a bit more about this period in brazil id have been maybe giving it an even higher rating that i have, even though ive heaped praise upon it.