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.
Fresh off of two Golden Globe wins – one for Best Motion Picture – Not in the English Language and the other seeing star Wagner Moura winning Best Actor – Drama, The Secret Agent is one of the most talked about international films at the moment, and rightfully so! As the film prepares to release across Australia on January 22, Nick L’Barrow spoke with film critic turned filmmaker, and the writer-director of The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonca Filho, about his fascination and connection with Australian cinema, plus the childhood memories that served for the immense world building found in the film.
Kleber Mendonça Filho: I just picked this up earlier today…
Kleber shows me a recently released 4K copy of Ted Kotcheff’s Wake In Fright.
Nick: It’s funny that you’ve shown me that film in particular. Because I also love Wake in Fright, but I watched you do one of the Letterboxd Four Favourites videos, and you mentioned Wake in Fright. Sadly, we lost Ted Kotcheff this year, but I’d love to start our chat by asking how Ted’s work, and Australian films moulded your tastes as a film lover and filmmaker?
KMF: Well, I only got to see Wake in Fright maybe 13, 14 years ago when it resurfaced and i programmed it in a film festival with a super high quality DCP at the time. But, it is such a strong film. It’s not exactly a horror film, but it feels like a horror film. It is very much about men, which in its own way is very scary. It’s quite a frightening film. It’s Kafka-esque. It’s shot in a way that is so special and fundamentally from another part of the world, which happens to be Australia. And it really matches, visually, what I have seen.
The reason I have fallen in love with so many Australian films, many which I have seen in cinemas, is because there is such a strange, but good-natured nastiness that I sometimes see in Australian cinema. You know, Mad Max and Mad Max 2 I think are two amazing classics. Razorback. Some of the wonderful Peter Weir films. Peter Weir came to see The Secret Agent two days ago, and that was so special to me. The Last Wave. There was a strangeness to these films, and the way they looked – many of them shot in Panavision anamorphic. But, at the same time, we know that these films were done with very little money. So everything about the classic idea of Australian cinema, even into the 90s with something like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I had this connection to Australian cinema.
The Long Weekend is a film that I really love. I saw that film in the 80s on BBC Two, and I was like the only person at parties or in my circle that had seen it! It was completely unknown. And then in the last 20 years, I think it made a comeback on DVD, and I’m not sure if it’s restored, but it’s a film I will never forget. Even as a teenager, I thought something like that could’ve even been a Brazilian film.
Nick: I don’t know if you have seen it, but there is a film that came out last year from two young Australian filmmakers called Birdeater that is very Kafka-esque and inspired by Wake in Fright that examines that psychological brutality of toxic masculinity in a contemporary way.
KMF: I’m going to write that one down and find it.
*Writer’s note: Kleber did end up purchasing Birdeater, and posted it to his Instagram, stating that the film was a recommendation from an ‘amigo’!
KMF: I have to also mention a film that really impressed me, which I think is from the same lineage, which is Snowtown by Justin Kurzel. I don’t think any other film culture would make a film in those terms, with that tone. It’s a good natured nastiness which is really unusual.
Nick: I feel very lucky that Australia has such a rich cinematic history, and many fantastic filmmakers. And I think your film holds some aesthetic similarities to something like Wake in Fright, especially the use of colour. Both The Secret Agent and Wake in Fright use this harsh yellow and orange blend for the grading, but you also then so strongly contrast that with the brightness of the trees or even Marcelo’s car in the beginning of the film. Can you talk to your process of using colour for story telling and building atmosphere?
KMF: It’s a very interesting question. First of all, it has to look right from the Brazilian pount of view. Because you can make a Brazilian film and go full Michael Bay, or you can go blue like all these fucking modern films where everything is blue! I don’t know why that is. If it’s set in Mexico or Latin America or the Middle East, everything is this drab, desaturated yellow. And so, I was talking to Evgenia [Alexandrova], my DOP on the film, who did a fantastic job, and we talked about these places that had to look close to the reality we see. The northwest of Brazil, where I come from and where I made the film, is super tropical. The sun is vertical, and I wanted to not avoid that kind of light, because many filmmakers prefer to shoot when the sun is going down to make everything feel softer. But I wanted the characters to have shadows under their eyes, because the sun is right above them and it’s harsh. So, the colour had to be right, but at the same time, it had to look like fucking cinema. Whatever that means [laughs]!
I can’t tell you what cinema is, but it’s something that when I look at it and I say, “Yeah, that looks like cinema”, you know? Of course, using anamorphic Panavision lenses and the right setup for the camera, and the way you frame it, and the way you pan, or the way you dolly back, hopefully it works and looks like “cinema”. Colour is about sticking to reality. Don’t try to change it. Don’t try to make it more or less dramatic. Don’t try and make it like you’re in a third world country. Just shoot it the way it is, and it might just work.
Nick: Part of the reality you achieve in creating comes through the rich characters that Marcelo interacts with throughout the film. The story feels authentic and lived in. I’m curious to know how deep do you go with each characters background and story, and how does it evolve when you bring the actors in for those roles?
KMF: I think after four feature films, I really believe that it begins with the given, dramatic situation. For example, Marcelo is introduced to Claudia, this woman who has a daughter, and they say hello. But it’s Sebastian who actually spills the beans and says that she actually came over to check him out. And in the next scene she’s doing a dental inspection of his cavities, and we know by this point that she’s a dentist. And, they just happen to be in bed together. It’s not exactly a sex scene, but it’s a moment of intimacy between them. I think that moment is interesting and quite strong because it’s not exactly a love story, but they happen to be together and having an intimate connection as a man and a woman. As a person and another person. And I think the actors understood that situation quite well. We never really discuss specifics.
In the petrol station scene, it’s quite a clear scene that helps us understand Marcelo a little bit. He’s never cynical about that situation, and maybe in another film there would be some comedic, confrontational remarks. In another film he might lift the cardboard to see what happened to the guy’s face. But, I think he’s more shocked. He has to get gasoline for the car, and he wants to get out of that place as soon as possible. But, it’s a fucked up situation, and even the guy working at the petrol station has these harsh words to say about the guy who died. He doesn’t want the dogs to lick or eat. And I think the characters and the scene is quite clear in building the world. And the actors understood the sequence very well.
Nick: I love how you have these vignette moments that split off from Marcelo’s storyline, but they still have these connections to Marcelo and everything that is happening to him, and most importantly give context to what Brazil was like during this time. When you break off into these moments, how much of it is giving the audience backstory and context, and how much of it is you exploring ideas as a creative?
KMF: I really believe that film has the logic of life. And for me, the logic of life means things don’t occur– you’re not fed information. Sometimes in film, things are explained very clearly to you. It’s almost like if you’re doing research and going into the archives, and then you find an important piece of information which is non-linear in terms of what you do and do not understand, and you start to piece it all together.
I think I took it as far as I could in terms of holding back, and hopefully people are still interested and intrigued! It takes a while, but hopefully it’s very satisfactory once you understand what is happening to this man and what they are doing to him. This is the story of Marcelo. He did something, and he has to deal with the consequences. And that’s where the film begins, but I really like the world building, and atmosphere, and having the audience go, “What the fuck is going on?”. And I like taking a little bit of time to get there!
Nick: When it does come to building the world and keeping it within reality, I imagine being 9 or 10 years old in Brazil during 1977, and your recollection and memory of that time helped in making it feel so authentic and lived in…
KMF: For this film, I went back quite deep into many personal memories, childhood memories, connected to my parents and my uncles, the school I went to. And for many years, my main point of interest was for the local newspapers and the movie ads, because you can see all of these posters in super high contrast. And that’s when I began to read that first reviews in my life, reading somebody explain the plot of a film or describing what it looked like and felt like. And there were all of these reviews that really put a timestamp on these memories of a particular time.
It was also a time of crisis in my family. My mother was ill, so my youngest uncle took myself and my brother to the cinema many times. It was like a carnival of cinema. He basically wanted to drug us with film and take us away from that situation. And that put a stamp on that time. But ironically, I did not see The Omen at that time because it was an 18-rating. But I walked past the cinema and there was a poster for The Omen and even that had quite an impact on me.
I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind on opening weekend, and that is one I have the strongest memory of. Walking out of that with my brother and my uncle. And then today, I respect it as such an amazing piece of American filmmaking. In one way, it looks like a Robert Atlman film – so realistic. And then, in another way, it looks like an incredibly well directed episode of sci-fi television.
To this day, I still go to the San Luis cinema, which is the one in the film, and I remember seeing Orca: The Killer Whale…
Kleber holds up a recently purchased 4K copy of Orca: The Killer Whale
KMF: These are memories that never left my head. And I use them to write. And hopefully you will pick up on the things that are truthful. It has to be truthful, because fake and phony is what we always get anyway in movies today.
Nick: Kleber, that’s unfortunately my time. I could talk to you about film for a long time. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope you enjoy Birdeater!
KMF: It was great talking to you. Thank you so much. I will be going to JB Hi-Fi after this and looking for it!
Thank you so much to Kleber for his time, and to Rialto Distribution Australia for organising the interview. The Secret Agent is in Australian cinemas January 22.
