The protagonist of “The Secret Agent” isn’t a secret agent; he only lives like one. The reason for his clandestine maneuvering is apparent from the film’s first scene, when he pulls into a gas station on a country road. Before he can drive off with his tank replenished, the police show up. The officers’ arrival is no surprise: there’s a rotting corpse on the premises. What’s surprising is that they ignore the body. Instead, one of them questions the traveller and searches his car with a menacing nonchalance. This is Brazil in 1977, when the country was in the grip of a military dictatorship and, as the movie goes on to show, the notions of crime and punishment were severely warped: one incautious word to the wrong person was enough to send someone on the run.

“The Secret Agent” is a polit

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