A Raucous Reckoning With Brazil’s Dictatorship

A man from out of town pulls up in a candy-yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the backseat loaded with boxes and suitcases. After parking, he notices something disturbing: a human corpse, barely covered by sheets of cardboard, rotting in the summer sun. A would-be thief, the station attendant explains, shot dead by his co-worker. With Carnaval festivities underway, he doesn’t expect the police to show up until Ash Wednesday. “I’m almost getting used to this shit,” he complains affably while wiping down the windshield.

The Secret Agent, the latest feature by Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, opens on a desolate, sun-soaked gas station outside Recife, a bustling coastal metropolis in Brazil’s northeast. It’s Carnaval 1977, “uma época cheia de pirraça”—a time of mischief, the subtitles tell us. For those familiar with Brazilian history, this places us roughly halfway through the country’s 21-year military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.

The Secret Agent, the latest feature by Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, opens on a desolate, sun-soaked gas station outside Recife, a bustling coastal metropolis in Brazil’s northeast. It’s Carnaval 1977, “uma época cheia de pirraça”—a time of mischief, the subtitles tell us. For those familiar with Brazilian history, this places us roughly halfway through the country’s 21-year military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.

A man from out of town pulls up in a candy-yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the backseat loaded with boxes and suitcases. After parking, he notices something disturbing: a human corpse, barely covered by sheets of cardboard, rotting in the summer sun. A would-be thief, the station attendant explains, shot dead by his co-worker.