Critical Darlings: The Secret Agent And The Increasingly International Academy

Welcome to Critical Darlings, a conversation about the awards season conversation, one contender at a time. Please welcome to the stage your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore. Marie, thank you as ever for that wonderful introduction and for being a guest on the show last week. We don't have a guest this week, but we are, of course, joined as always by producer Ben. Hello, Ben. Viva Brazil! Guten talk to you. We're mainly today going to be talking about The Secret Agent, but also international films, their presence in America in the box office and at the Oscars. I'll get into a little Berlin talk. from i was just at that film festival but before we do that we should acknowledge that this week the legendary robert duvall died at the ripe old age of 95 um i was asked by rolling stone to contribute a little blurb for like a my favorite of his movie performances and embarrassingly i've seen him be great in many things but i was like i think he's wonderful in deep impact and they were like we don't want that but obviously that's not one of it but he's really good in it yeah no he definitely is um and of course um because we do we do talk awards here let us reduce that legendary career to a series of oscar nominations it was impressive and one win do you know what the win was for i feel like it's not maybe the one you would expect is it is it for great santini no tender mercies tender mercies yeah 1984 right right but uh nominated for best supporting for the godfather apocalypse now yeah uh and then deep impact deep impact no he did get a favorite supporting actor sci-fi from the blockbuster entertainment awards oh wait for what for for great santini no i'm just like i think they do they divide them all up by genres screw you a comedy musical sci-fi category um but yeah best actor nominated for great tantini for the apostle one that was big in the night that was kind of a comeback for him in the 90s yeah and then uh best supporting for a civil action and the judge that movie we all love and talk and let me tell you that judge nomination he debases himself in that movie in one particularly graphic way okay i that you're like the academy was like oh good god we gotta we gotta like make sure this wasn't off or not like we gotta give him the nom here yeah um yeah that that that's definitely a movie that I saw that does not live in my brain in any way. In IMAX, because for whatever reason, it just played at the IMAX Theater in Toronto. He's obviously an incredible actor, and I think that when I was younger, he just sort of existed in my movie consciousness because of various movies that my parents liked. Then the older I got, and I revisited some of those things, or even watched him in new stuff. He was acting well late into his life. He was just such a natural in a way that I think was maybe taken for granted because he was so natural. Like it didn't really seem even though he could be kind of big and blustery. It always just felt like, well, that's just that. I know that man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. One of those people that you take for granted because they have just been, you know, part of the foundations of movie going for so long. But yeah. Richard, this morning, you were in Berlin. Yeah. Yeah. Good morning. You're having a long day. Such is your dedication to the art of podcasting. As you can hear, I kind of lost my voice. I actually spent about five days wandering around Berlin with a cold, so I felt very Tom Hanks and Bridge of Spies. And, you know, Berlin is a very modern city now and all that, but it still has a lot of vestiges of that sort of Cold War era. Like a lot of the subway cars are like these boxy yellow things and the streets aren't very brightly lit. It felt very atmospheric in that sort of spy movie way, which I enjoyed. But I wasn't there for that. I was there for movies. You weren't there to go try and get into Bear Heiden. Is that how you say it? I've actually never... Yes, okay. Did you try? No, God, no. I would just need to know. You have to wait in line for a really long time, though. What if you just, you're like, you get the wave in and you're like, that's all I needed, and you leave. Thanks, bye. Yeah, that would be it. No, I didn't try for that. uh maybe another time um but it it's an interesting trip this berlin flint festival because it's like it's in the winter but it's not sundance um you're in a big city which a lot of the festivals like can is a big town but there's a little like area where that festival happens ditto park city ditto telluride obviously toronto venice even has its own sort of localized thing there aren't screenings all over venice but in berlin there are they're all over the city there is a festival hub where like the kind of main you know all the big premieres for the competition films happen there all that but otherwise i was kind of just like riding the subway seeing movies in different neighborhoods which was kind of cool if it felt like a little bit what's the thing they say about nyu kids like the city is your campus you know and people are like i want a quad i want a real campus and i kind of felt a little bit of that here where i was like i wish i kind of felt like i was with other festival people yeah how german does it feel um like do yeah germans give like 10 minute long standing ovations that seems somehow less german to me not in my experience i mean i didn't go to any of the premieres but like apparently there was one movie called rosebush pruning that is like a brazilian something else co-production it's in english and it was one of the big star-studded movies so like callum turner tracy let's elf fanning uh riley keogh jamie bell were in it and apparently it's quite bad it's like an attempt at like oh like it's the it's it's um lanthimos is former or frequent collaborator the screenwriter yeah he wrote the co-wrote the screenplays for dog tooth alps lobster killing sacred deer kinds of kindness yeah so it's that sort of sensibility but then mixed with this brazilian director who made like motel destino and a couple other things. And it apparently went over so badly that there were some whistles of derision at the end of the press screening, but no boos. So I think it's a much more reserved... Had that movie been at Cannes, from the sound of it, I didn't see it. I think people would have been really vocal about it. Of the big three Euro festivals that Cannes, Venice, it definitely feels the least like glamour, pomp, and circumstance, all that. That's where the golden bear is from. The golden bear. Venice has the golden lion. And can has, well, the palm for the golden. Gold is gold is really the name of the game. And then the acting prize at Berlin is the silver bear, which used to be divided by gender. But I think about six years ago, they combined it into one lead, one supporting, which Andrew Scott won last year for Blue Moon, which I think is kind of the first Oscar movie that Berlin has had in a while, like 45 years. The Andrew Hague film that was a while ago. That led to a Charlotte Rampling nomination and some other buzz. but other than that berlin does not seem to function as like an awards clearinghouse in the context of awards at least this is not the place that you would look to and even like and we're going to talk more this episode about like international films in now how they play in america especially at the awards and i think even from that context like i don't know that a premiere in berlin is giving a movie that you know a stateside distributor would want to have a high profile i don't know if it's giving it that but there were american celebrities there wasn't there something with calum turner and tracy that yeah that's the bad one that people his time oh and there was some sort of viral thing oh yeah so someone at so the press so one at one yeah a hallmark of these three big european film festivals and others i'm sure are these press conferences and so you get all these journalists from all over and then the panel of the director and the stars and it's usually the more the morning of the premiere so all of the cast from rose bush pruning was doing that, I believe, on Friday morning. And some journalists asked Callum Turner, kind of assuming, so you're going to be James Bond. And Callum Turner was like, I'm not going to answer that. And then Tracy Letts said, oh, actually, I'm going to be James Bond. But that was kind of a nice moment of levity, because the press conferences this year at Berlin had mostly been marred by this very strange political discourse where the jury president, the director of vim vendors who's you know been around forever is a kind of he won a palm door years ago like he for what wings of desire um you know a pretty respected director and he basically said like we're not going to get into politics like movies aren't political like and everyone was like oh yeah yeah yeah and then it kept coming up to the extent that the director of the festival issued their own press release saying like please refrain from like or something like to the effect of like, let's not drag politics into this where it doesn't need to be. And it was like, so, yeah. Well, also like Arundhati Roy, right? The novelist, he was supposed to be at the festival. It was like a film she wrote in 1989. They had a restored version. And she like withdrew because she was so like irate at that sentiment that Vendors expressed. So I did really enjoy that someone, I guess, asked Rupert Grint a question about this at his press conference and led to the immortal quote. They asked him about fascism. And he was like, obviously, I'm against it. So I was at dinner. Oh, that's one good thing. Amazing food in Berlin. I was at dinner with some colleagues, and we were talking about that. And do you guys remember that when Rupert Grint, like, when the kids were, like, old enough, the Harry Potter kids old enough to, like, maybe have access to the money they'd been earning? Some journalist was like, what's the, have you splurged on anything? And Rupert Grint was like, I bought an ice cream truck. and so i was imagining rupert grint driving his ice cream truck around one day and all of a sudden it's just like a light bubble over his head he was like i oppose fascism as the song is going you know yeah but no i'm glad he that was a bold statement yeah i know i'm i'm never going to look up what the actual question was that he was asked because i just prefer that it was how's the ice cream truck doing yeah um or someone was just like fascism right it was like obviously i'm against it And then everyone just moved on again. I mean, obviously, I'm not a German historian, I'm not a European historian. Obviously, Berlin is the locus of a lot of anxiety and historical sort of reckoning over things that happened almost a century ago. And the Berlinale Palace, where all of this stuff is happening, is maybe not even a 10-minute walk from the Holocaust Memorial and all that. So, like, sensitivities are high, and I understand why. But it was just kind of interesting where, like, whereas at Cannes, you kind of expect these crazy, like, political things to happen and, like, Lars von Trier to, like, make Kirsten Dunst look miserable while he talks about Nazis and stuff. Yeah, or, like, at the awards last year. I mean, a lot of people brought up Gaza, you know? Yeah. So it is interesting. Well, and we'll talk about, you know, Philhoff's films. Like when I saw Aquarius at Cannes years ago, there was a huge like anti-Bolsonaro protest on the red carpet, like people holding banners and unfurling them in the theater. And Berlin just seemed really, at least this year, totally averse to any such expression or even like questioning of the filmmakers. So that was kind of put a weird sort of mood in there, I would say. And then the movies themselves, I didn't see that many because I was sick and tired and like the schedule was kind of not didn't work in my favor. but you were there with a specific set of assignments so right uh no no i was just kind of there that no yeah i was just there i mean i had an assignment i had to do a prisoner exchange uh with a sort of like that was just like on your own time on your own time yeah so yeah i didn't see anything that i think will like set the world afire like let's say the secret agent when it played at can um but the secret agent uh i feel like at can was not necessarily the movie i would pick up to be like this is going to start picking up a lot of steam uh you know we i mean we have like two uh international films that have really uh you know done quite well across these oscars you have sentimental value you have uh the secret agent yeah i don't i mean i saw the secret both of those films like can i saw the secret agent there and um it was a film i liked a lot though i like you was like pretty tired when i saw it so i did not feel like i was giving it like my entire due But it was not a film that I would have guessed would have gone as far as it has by any means. I mean, like it, I think, is a film that has rewarded multiple viewings. I think it's a great film. It is one of my favorite films of the year. It's also like not an easy film. No, it's not. And yet it keeps winning and getting nominated, being nominated for and winning awards that like it won at the Spirit Awards this past weekend. And not to knock that voting membership, but that's you can just pay to be a member. You can just pay to be a voter. I think it's like something, 100 bucks a year or something. I mean, this brings me to my eternal question. How real are, in this case, the Spirit Awards? I feel like they're approximately as real as the Gotham Awards, right? Like, they have a bit of an edge. They're a little realer than that. They're a little realer. I mean, they have a bit of an edge in that the nomination committee, which in this case is always kept secret, is larger. Yeah, it's not really even known, like, how that works. The Gotham Awards, the nomination committee is like five critics. And it's public. Yes, and it's public. No one ever knows who's on the nomination. And there's photos of you being handed bags with dollar signs on them. And then there's writing that says nominate celebrity. And then I scurry off going like. The Berlin subway rattling above you. Just like silhouette in silhouette. Yeah, I as opposed to that, you know, the spirit or is a very careful about keeping who's on the nominating committee secret. But it is more people and people from across the film industry. And they still have a budget cap, unlike the Gothams. They do still have a budget cap. Yeah, but then the people who vote on the actual awards are just anyone who wants to be a member of Film Independent. Right. And so oftentimes with the Spirit Awards, like, you'll get a really interesting list of nominees. A lot of times I'm like, I haven't heard of that movie. Like, cool, that's something that I can check out. And then the winner is the most basic choice among those nominations. You know, it's the biggest celebrity in lead actor category, oftentimes the same in supporting. um and so a movie like secret agent i forget what it was nominated against but like winning the the international feature one it's like i thought that movie was kind of prickly and tricky and esoteric and and sort of hard to to kind of grasp at least that's how i found it the first time i saw it so that it really seems to be like penetrating uh even voting bodies that i think of as frankly being a little more like basic uh is interesting and i guess maybe i i don't know i mean it was a surprised right that it that we're talking about it that it's like a best because everyone so yeah sort of seemed like it was just an accident the iranian film was yeah gonna get that slot yeah i mean like this year's can was like i thought like this past year's can was a very good can but it was a very internationally driven one you know um not that it isn't always international like we like the united states does not go there being like we're the center of the universe i mean it can um i mean or we do do that no one necessarily listens you had the you had the one big english language film in time i love but but lin ramsey is from mars so like that doesn't it doesn't count yeah um right and you you know you had uh some of these did not stick uh julia du corno's uh alpha which is coming out now that never got any traction it did not go over well then were you a um tatan fan did you ever see tatan her did no i think you might like it i think you might hate alpha her follow-up that's probably the steepest palm door win to like to follow complete disaster that I've seen in a while. I mean, in my can't go in. Yeah, it was not received well. Die My Love was there. Eddington was there, but neither of those has gotten the kind of awards traction. History of Sound was there. But Eddington integrated the Turning Point USA Awards. They also misunderstood it, I think. Okay, but yeah, it was just an accident which won the Palme d'Or. You have Nouvelle Vague, the Richard Linklater. Which at the time felt like it goes down easy. You know, it's kind of, it's sweet. it's sentimental and that just didn't uh begans the resurrection which went over really well the critics even though it's way too long and it's just too i think like difficult for uh yeah the secret agent sentimental value surat sound of falling uh surat doing better than a lot of the movies you just named like kind of all it's like really surprising because that too is also really brutal and you know yeah it um it runs into certain taboos that uh i would not spoil here but it deploys them so deliberately like a statement, you know. You're talking about the techno music. We had tried to ban in America. And I'm just like, it should be illegal. No one should be allowed to play techno music. I don't agree with this. No, I'm kidding. I like it. In Europe, you can get away with it. I like Seurat a lot. But yeah, that was a film. I was kind of surprised how well that has continued to do it. Also, The Mastermind, the Kelly Reichert film, which I love, was also in competition. I never expect Kelly Reichert to make a movie that is necessarily going to cause an enormous splash here. That's not really just the kind of movie she makes. But I feel like in a quieter year, maybe Josh O'Connor would have been more in the discussion about that actor. Considering how much he was in in 2025 and was good in all of the things he was in. He's so good in The Mastermind. And you would have thought maybe something would have collected, like in combination somehow he would have broken through. But yeah, Secret Agent, I don't know. My guess about why that sort of endured post-Can is that re-watching it, I was like, okay, there are accessible elements here. There's a sort of suspense angle. There's, you know, I also think that Brazil just sort of is looming a lot in, like, movie consciousness in America right now after I'm Still Here last year. Political, you know, kind of parallels between our country and theirs, and obviously we've talked about it on this podcast, like Brazilian film fans are super activated, and so I think they've just permeated the consciousness of people in a way that... and also you know he's a great filmmaker he is a great filmmaker i mean it's interesting because i do feel like the secret agent is a much weirder movie than i'm still here right um oh yeah like like yeah what is i'm still here about so it's about uh a former brazilian congressman uh who is just kind of you know uh not in politics at the time he is like living this kind of lovely life with his family um and then he uh but it continues to be a kind of like vocal figure uh and he has basically just disappeared um and it is about the horror of that but also just the aftermath and just like how it affects everyone else in the focusing primarily on his wife yeah where she who was nominated are these kinds of political films like mainstream in brazil no i don't think so i think that it's kind of like i remember years ago i was saying to some french person at can i was like wow you guys are so lucky i mean all of your movies have played you know they were like richard no the popular french movies are the worst comedies you've ever seen terrible action movies like it's not that dissimilar i think i mean i don't know for sure i did look this up um if you look up the brazilian box office for 2025 uh the the top slate of movies for like is all just like hollywood studio stuff for like a long stretch but then And 13 was I'm Still Here, which did really well, you know. And Secret Agent did not do quite as well, but like it still did. It made like over six million dollars, I believe, domestically in Brazil, which is a lot of money, you know. So these are not small films. But I feel like it raises, I feel like what you're getting at a bit is a lot of these films that end up on the festival circuit are made. you can argue that their primary audience is the international festival circuit and not a domestic audience. There were also forces within the government, you know, past administrations in Brazil that were kind of actively suppressing these films. And, you know, in something as like ultimately petty is like not nominating it or not submitting it for the Oscars, but in other ways being more regressive. about it yeah um i mean and certainly in some countries like uh like in iran uh you know a lot of the films that are the most lauded internationally uh you know these films from iran are not shown because they're all banned right like uh they don't get approval to be shown in theaters uh and oftentimes the filmmakers are living in exile um so and i think that sometimes that's like a really beautiful function of something like can although sometimes i can detect there's i don't know maybe i'm being silly but like a sort of like are we being a little patronizing here like like i remember there was this movie at can years ago called refiki and it was from uh kenya and it was i think the first kenyan film ever to be like in a competition again and it was about two teenage girls who fall in love in nairobi and it was a sweet movie first-time filmmaker like like nice energy to it it wasn't like the best movie anyone's ever seen but it was like solid and i think it maybe won an award or something or was at least close to and the Kenyan government had banned the movie from playing in Kenya. And a lot of people on the ground at Cannes were like, well, we're going to show them and we're going to, you know, look, the rest of the world will teach that. And I understand that sentiment, but I think sometimes, I don't know, it can feel a little bit like, let's not overstate what this festival is doing to the politics of another country. Yeah, I think it's also, it's an impossible to resolve divide. Like I was talking to a filmmaker who'd grown up in Iran and I'm not going to blow up his spot, but was just talking just like so much shit about other. I was like, oh, the world of like the Iranian filmmakers is just as small and petty as like all other kind of like, you know, artistic worlds where everyone is also placed directly in competition. Everyone has their like friends and then they're their enemies. But he was he was talking about just like that frustration of feeling like there is pressure for you to also. I mean, there's like people want to hear stories about how awful things are right in your repressive country. Because that's a symbol of like one, like you're speaking out against this. And also like, you know, it is offering this insight into like what life is like there. But obviously, it's like a particular kind of insight. And like he was talking about how yeah I like on one side He like I don support the regime Like obviously And on the other side was like but also it feels so uncomfortable to be like kind of like always leaning into that for the benefit of like international audiences who watch that and feel kind of very like self about what yeah like kind of what they showcasing Right. Yeah. Like my idea of life in Tehran is like if I was just like reading all of those movies one way is like, oh, God, everyone's just walking around completely miserable there. And I don't think that people like find a way to live. You know, my therapy, an old therapist used to say, even during the siege of Leningrad, people took piano lessons, you know, like like life goes on. And I do think that the best of these Iranian films or whatever, you know, from other countries that are dealing with real political hardship, like they do show at least some aspect of that. Like, like, I don't know. I think two English films or films from Great Britain, they are so sold on their Britishness. And and that kind of just becomes a market reality when you're trying to sell things to an American market, which is one of, if not the largest English speaking market. certainly oh 100 and there if you look at like oscar like history like 80s 90s there have been different waves of a sort of anglophilia within the academy of like like billy elliott and full monty kind of ushered in this sort of like you know pip pip sort of like quirky cute like let's put on a show british movie you know the uh the the working title a production company distributor in the UK. Those sort of like glossier romantic comedies that Americans became addicted to for a while. And thus Britain, the film industry there became addicted to because they could make them and sell them overseas. Yeah. There's just as much fetishization there as there can be with others. Yeah. Or I mean, you brought up France and like, you know, yes. Like for a long time, American art house cinemas were sustained by talky French dramas about infidelity, right? Like that was just like... With a woman's name as the title. Exactly. like that was just and like you know to the point where when especially like as like a teenager with those were the mostly the french films i was exposed to i was just like well this is what they watch in france all the time and then you go to france and all of the posters are for something called like les bronzés like a sex comedy about like these middle-aged friends going to you know on vacation together or um i don't know i was looking at the highest grossing french film uh in france last year was like the fifth fourth or fifth installment in a comedy series called like god save the touche i think it's called which as far as i can tell is about this weird family who wins the lottery in the first installment and then just keep ending up in fish out of water situations in different parts of the world um i i apologize if i'm miscategorizing that bean yes i do think like this most recent one did they end up in the uk um but yeah like those do not we're gonna do a patreon podcast we're gonna do the whole yes all of the touche the touche series um those films do not come over here right like and i think there is also an interesting phenomena where you have i mean like the most the highest grossing film in iran is a comedy that came out in 2024 called 70 30 you know uh does not come out here like there is like a particular there are market forces that also in particular like we still mostly play international films here in the context of art house right so like we don't have a lot of places to play something like a broad french comedy beyond the fact that i don't think we would necessarily get the jokes you know like uh it feels very like um the humor feels very specific uh where is that going to come out yeah you know films from india from various you know tollywood and bollywood those play at you know in new york city they'll play at one of the bigger multiplexes for a weekend or two and some anime especially increasingly um it does weirdly even though that's i don't know it feels like k-pop demon hunter sort of broke the seal on that and there's also been i mean there's been one-offs of all of these like like it'll be a film attached to an anime series it will do like enormous numbers you know like those those are wildly popular in its like kind of own way that i feel like clearly is speaking to people who love a series of communal experience with other fans but yeah you have like indian films that are often sometimes like huge here but are marketed almost exclusively to a diaspora audience uh in bigger cities where there's yeah yeah Chinese blockbusters will play, if you go to the 42nd AMC here in the top floors, they will often have, like, you know, like, Chinese blockbusters that also are not marketed outside of diaspora audiences. Films from the Philippines, like romantic comedy. Like, there is this whole realm of, like, popular international cinema that for the most oftentimes we do not even hear about. David! What? This episode, don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. Oh, okay. This episode's brought to you by MUBI. Yawn. Just kidding. Comfortable. Secure. We love them. They are a global film company of champions grade cinema. Iconic directors. Emerging auteurs. Always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Wrong! There's a new film coming to theaters. Yep. movie theaters february 13th the first nigerian film ever in official competition again that's pretty wild this is a film by akinola davis called my father's shadow is bafta nominated poetic tender portrait of a father-son bond framed within the political landscape of 1993 lagos in uh nigeria it is about a father and two young sons as they journey to uh into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis reckoning with their relationship navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis written by real life brothers Akinola Davis Jr. and Wally Davis love it brothers co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut and you've got Sofei Dorisu oh from Slow Horses I love him I hope I'm saying his name right but he's a really good actor and he's the star it's worth seeing it's in theaters it's great to go to a theater It's in theaters. We love that Mubi puts Mubis in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. Dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die My Love, of course. An important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. La Grazia, the new Paolo Sorrentino movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. The Great Shall We Dance. Oh, the classic? The original. Oh, my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration. Yeah. And look, they got a collection called Heartthrob Nicholas Cage. It's Young Dreamy Cage. Wow. Still dreaming to me. Hey, you're very open hearted. Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's Mubi.com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see My Father's Shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. very kind so something I have always wondered about or been confused by is the process by which a film becomes an international nomination because it's different it sort of seems like there's a Eurovision sort of situation where countries submit films but you can apparently submit a film that's not from your country because because it was just an accident. Was it the French? Yeah, it was the French. How does all of this work? So what happens is there's a Japanese lightning gun named Raiden, and he'll travel around and recruit various movies to compete against. He's really busy. Like that time of year, he's just zapping around. I always see him like drunk at like can parties. It's really embarrassing. Like you need a vacation now. Yeah, it'll just zap away. No, I mean, it is up to the discretion of each country. Some of the selection committees, I think, are much more tied to the government than in some countries it's more independent. I mean, obviously they are in some way affiliated with the government because the film is representing that country to the extent that when like Almodovar won, like Spain got that Oscar, he didn't get that Oscar, even though he held it on stage. But I think it really depends on the country in terms of, it's oftentimes very political. There was that thing a couple of years ago where there was a film from India called All We Imagine Is Light that was at Cannes a few years ago. It performed very well at Cannes, which is somewhat rare for an Indian film. The knock against it from people who are much more closely associated with the Indian film industry is like, well, it played well at Cannes because it plays like a Western movie. Like it has a similar style to like a French indie that you might see at Cannes. It's kind of dreamy and sort of – it uses more Western film grammar. and then the Indian the board in India that would select what gets submitted to the Oscars picked a different film that they said in a statement better reflects India and everyone was outraged because this female directed movie that everyone had loved at Cannes that a lot of western people really loved was not chosen as the selection and they said well that's so stupid because it would have gotten nominated and that would have been huge for India but in that case the board of people deciding that didn't really care if it affected their oscar chances would that other film have been still eligible for best picture oh yeah yeah very much so it's just that one category that has this kind of weird submission process that a lot of people think should be done away with they've made some effort to correct it where they do like the long list thing now they just because it used to just be is there a french film it's getting nominated and now that's changed a bit like they've tried to diversify what movies these, you know, the nominating people are seeing. But in the case of a movie like It Was Just an Accident this year or Seed of the Sacred Fig, another Iranian film that went through Germany on, you know, in its Oscar campaign, a country can, if there is some connection, I believe It Was Just an Accident had some French financing and Cedar Sacred Fig, Mohamed Rosaloff, the director of that, was living in exile in Germany at the time. So there was a connection enough to the country that they were like, our stuff is not that good, we'll just do this. And it's political goodwill. There's so much politicking. Famously, a few years ago, France did not pick Anatomy of a Fall, which did go on to get a Best Picture, Best Director, nomination. and won a screenplay. Yeah. They chose The Taste of Things instead, which is, you know, with Juliette Binoche. It was a movie I also really liked, but that caused a minor controversy. People thought it was because Disney Tree had criticized Macron in his speech, I believe. Like, people were kind of, like, pinning that. I mean, it was also, like, Anatomy of All is in a mix of languages, including English, which kind of, like, raises a question about, like, whether it has to be a certain percentage of not in English language. But I think also then, according to a friend of mine, that led to a lot of voters feeling like they shouldn't vote for Taste of Things, especially in Europe. Which sucks, because that movie was good. But that because they felt like they had to kind of punish France. And so there's all kinds of politicking behind the scenes. So it is Eurovision? It is Eurovision. It is Eurovision, yeah. Look, imagine this. and I'm saying imagine it for different administrations. Imagine if the U.S. had to do this. Like for like, if the Oscars were not American, let's say the Oscars happen every year in Amsterdam and we're trying to get American movies like attention and it's hard to get. Imagine the Trump administration. What movie? I mean, they would be picking, they'd be like, can we do Sound of Freedom for the fourth year in a row? Yeah. Or whatever, you know? Of course, yeah, yeah. Or like Brett Ratner's Rush Hour 4 would definitely be that when that gets made. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about the year, like, India chose, like, last film show for their submission, which did not, it got shortlisted, it did not get far. And it's fine, but it was like one of that year, there were, I think, a bunch of kind of, like, starry-eyed films about film and the magic of movies, right? And you're like, yeah, you can see them being like, this is what we got to do to get it. This is what it can be. Yeah, yeah. And so when they're submitting a film, do they tend to go more political or artier? It can be all over the place. I mean, I think it's always interesting to look at what China submits now, especially recently. China has increasingly had its own enormously homegrown world of blockbusters that make enormous amounts of money. uh and sometimes when you look at earlier you you have films from like jang yi mo uh you have films uh you know from um these different filmmakers whose films played really well on the international circuit uh and like in more recent years these have just all been like some of which are just like yes like big blockbusters like the wandering earth 2 you know was their submission a few years ago uh wolf warrior 2 like a super nationalistic like action movie there almost is this like fuck you like we don't need to play by your game anymore it doesn't matter alternatively so over the weekend i saw kukuho the um the uh japanese submission uh for best foreign film that also did get a best makeup oscar and that movie which is like kabuki star is born sort of thing uh makes a lot of sense because it's about this sort of japanese cultural heritage um and then in 2021 they submitted drive my car which won yeah and uh which which got a best picture nomination as well uh yeah i mean it's i i there is an interesting tension always between i mean kokuhou was like a very successful film in japan like an enormous hit but yeah it also feels like it is very much showcasing an idea of Japanese-ness that, you know, should be pretty clear to audiences. And we should look to what the Japanese government is right now and versus what it was during the drive-by-car year, like the administration's changed. It's become a bit more, you know, conservative. And, you know, and I think that the one heartening thing about this Byzantine kind of like process with the different countries having their own agendas is that for many, many, many years, that was the only route that a non-english language non-american or british film really had toward the kind of awards attention that yes can lead to financial and you know success all that increasingly these movies now are like well actually with 10 best picture nominees to fill like we could actually get them it's okay if they don't get not that their country doesn't submit them because maybe they'll do well anyway um you know and obviously parasite broke the dam in terms of being the first international film to win Best Picture ever. I did a rough tally, if anyone's curious. And I could be wrong because I might have missed something here or there. But I only went back to the 70s. In the 70s, there were two non-English language films nominated for Best Picture. Both Swedish, right? Both Swedish. Yeah, Cry's Whispers. None in the 80s. Not a single one. and granted this was back when they were only five best picture nominees for any given year 95 had two and il postino which was sort of a sentimental hit with and obviously a formative uh clockwork orange style viewing experiment for me yeah life is beautiful obviously which did win some things um crouching tiger in 2000 so then we're in the 2000s or the aughts crouching tiger And then 2006 has two that I think are sort of like nebulous. One is Letters from Iwo Jima, which is in Japanese and stars Japanese actors, but it's directed by Clint Eastwood. Sure. And it's a Hollywood production. So like that's kind of dubious. But that same year is also Babel, which is a big international co-production with some big movie stars in it and Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. And then, you know, other segments that are not in English. The Artist in 2011, also kind of dubious. Yeah, yeah. Because it's a Harvey Weinstein production, but it's French filmmakers. filmmakers but also it's it's yeah silent for the most part yeah yeah and then something changes in 2012 and this is around when they start expanding the best picture you know yeah it was at 2010 was when they announced they were spending yeah yeah so amore the michael hannick a film about dementia that is one of the most harrowing movies you could ever sit through but also beautiful um that broke through and got a best picture nomination a best director nomination and a best actress nomination then it took another then roma happened which again netflix it's a little bit whatever but that is you know a mexican production parasite wins in 2019 in the 2020s things have picked up you know if you think about the 80s had zero in the 2020s alone you could count minari by some extent drive my car big big one two in 2022 which were all quiet on the western front and triangle of sadness some in english but not not an american production uh anatomy of a fall which won a screenplay oscar emilia perez which um is winning is winning all this year's oscars as well as last year's And I'm still here. So that was two in the Best Picture lineup in 2024. And we have two this year in Secret Agent and Sentimental Value. So so things seem to be progressing. Only Parasite has one. But it's still great that all of these movies and more and other categories are like part of the party now. Yeah. And I think, you know, we can't talk about this without noting that at this point, the Academy is, I think, like a quarter international, like in terms of where they're based on their mother's side, on their mother's side. And, you know, the Academy has made a really kind of like, like aggressive move to expand its membership, particularly to expand its membership in terms of diversity, which has been long been criticized for. And part of the way it's done that is by becoming more international, which you could speak to another testament to the sad state of America, the American film industry, where they just ran out of kind of people to invite who are not white men, I guess. And there has been some criticism that I don't think can be founded in anything but a feeling right now, necessarily, is that for all of the good that making the Academy as a whole more international and that you bring in different filmmakers, more exciting films from all over the world, is that these people are also bringing in some other prejudices. You know, and I know one thing that people are concerned about in terms of like the performance of the Nickel Boys or perhaps even Sinners that ultimately in March this year is that like that stories about black Americans might not be of interest to like 70 year old French directors who are now part of the Academy, you know, which is, you know, white French directors, I should say, which like, again, it's not based in any fact, but it's necessarily but it's based on sort of lived experience and intuition based on what we know about various other countries, film industries. Yeah, and I think there has long been held as a kind of ironclad fact, though it's actually much more complicated than this, that films about characters of color just don't perform as well abroad. I think that the numbers have actually proven that is not the case, but it has long been used, especially with big studio movies, to justify... Not spending on marketing and not... Yeah, exactly. And kind of like not counting on these films, giving them as big a boost as you would a blockbuster starring a white actor. I think about the poster of 12 Years a Slave, in which it's just like Brad Pitt is the only character on it. Yep. Yeah. It's a kind of amazing, famous one. Literally horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's let's turn our attention to The Secret Agent, a film that... addresses tricky issues of race and class and politics. And yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a really dense movie that, while a period piece speaks to the year now. But I think one of the reasons that I think it is done so well is that it also is this kind of like big swaggering, kind of like, at certain points it's an action movie, at certain points it's a thriller, you know. Bright, it's colorful. It is. Like, yeah. And I think, you know, Griff brought up a great point when we were talking about Marty Supreme, which is like we were talking about marty's dream with griffin dunn though yeah he just always comes by actually we're always like oh here he is again griffin uh griffin dunn if you ever want to come on the podcast i would love to have you um that like this feels like a 70s it has a bit of this like muscular 70s like you know new hollywood swagger uh like in terms of not just its setting you know and that's like the really like rich saturated colors that it has that uh feel like And it's pacing. And, like, it feels, there are aspects to it that feel a little bit like the conversation or something like that. But also, like, you watch, like, Costas Gavros' Z from that era. Like, it also has that vibe, which, again, is not American, but, like, has that fun, shaggy 70s energy that's also sophisticated intellectually and politically. And that's a really interesting, heady mix, I think. Yeah. And then, you know, you have Wagner Mora, who I've seen in so many things before. You know, he has been kind of like working in Hollywood, in American productions a lot in more recent years, you know, including not. Well, he was in Narcos, the Netflix kind of like one of those really big. Wasn't there some controversy that a Brazilian was playing famous Colombian Pablo Escobar? Yeah, that would make sense. I think there was a little bit. Some people from Colombia were like, wait a second. Yeah. And then, you know, he was in Civil War. He was in Dope Thief. uh he's been working a lot uh i an actor i've always liked but yeah when he comes on screen he gets out of the little yellow like vw beetle in this in his quite an opening sandals and his like scruff and his like polo shirt open to a very 70s length down his chest i was like oh wait dr mora is like the most handsome man alive he has a like safe quality i that like when he's on screen, I feel safe. Yeah. And I feel calm. And he's so anchors everything in this like very chaotic place, both politically, but also in terms of like, there was just a party happening at all times. And when you with him his soft soothing ASMR voice No there a warmth to him Yeah And actually I think that what made his performance as Escobar so compelling was because he was like really sympathetic I mean, you know, this man was doing horrible things. But compared to the cops on that show, you're like, but he so has that quality they're describing. No, he's perfectly cast in this. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think like I was rewatching it, you know, in preparation for this. And there's a little scene where he first because he's like returned to Recife, which is where director clebber mendoza filio is from and kind of sets all of his movies uh aside from baccarau uh it he picks up his child which is the reason one of the reasons he's come back to this to this his hometown and he uh is like driving with his son in the back seat and like listening to his son talk about like jaws which he's obsessed with and just like reaches his hand back to like hold his son's hand and there's something that is just so like very unfortunately just speaks to this enormous affection you know um that you believe it so much it does feel i think a lot of this film feels and not in a dreamy way but it feels like it is informed by uh filio's like memories of this era in this like i you know a lot of this film is a bit about this child um and kind of like how much we retain in terms of memory and how much gets lost and especially with like no physical records and uh i think there is like that touch of memory not in a way that's distant but in a way that feels like warm like you're remembering this like warm moment from your childhood you mentioned the first scene which i think is so important and is one of these like opening scenes that serves as sort of a metaphor for the entire the film as a whole right in which maybe we should just describe it it's like there's a um he arrives in this little it's like a little gas station on the road and there's a dead body that's like just there covered by a cardboard box basically right yeah and the cops arrive and it sort of seems like they're going to inspect this body but instead they just take him down they take him down for a bribe yeah and you can sort of it's incredibly tense but is also there's this like unspeakable thing that we cannot speak about that's just in the background we don't know this guy's name i think we learned that he's like a thief yeah he tried to rob the station but otherwise is not a presence in the rest of the film it's just this kind of thing that hangs over it well there's a lovely image of maura and this lovely yellow car and this landscape behind him and then right you know 15 feet away is a rotting dead body and and that's the kind of feeling the dogs keep trying to eat yeah throughout the rest of the film is like you know that that seems to have been at least in this movie's you know memory estimation, like the sort of bizarre juxtaposition of life in parts of Brazil then was like, this loveliness, this warmth, this vibrancy, carnivals happening, all this stuff is happening. And yet, next door or down the street or right in front of me is this the rot of government, the violence of government, you know, all this stuff. And, and, and, but it's not heavy handed when it does that, which I think is, yeah, it's hard to do. I do think one of the reasons this movie has performed so well, despite not being conventional by any means in the terms of like the path it takes is that it is about the experience of living under a kind of a dictatorship right which is to say these certain things are so fundamentally broken in ways that make life like unstable and hard to count on right like yeah the police come around and instead of doing their job they just like shake you down for money uh the there's just so much naked corruption like what we learn about the the main character uh whose whose name is armando but goes by marcello or marcello sorry throughout most of the movie is that uh you know like he basically ran into this like corrupt businessman who has also like had ties like very high up in the to the government and it basically destroyed his life um but like to show the ways that all of those things are so broken and at the same time day-to-day life continues right like carnival continues uh like it like the bustle outside people are taking piano lessons yeah people are they're going to jobs yeah they're going to see jaws or the omen which features in quite recording podcasts about award shows exactly exactly and i do think that is part of the reason i think it speaks to people so much you know even as it is like a kind of beguilingly weird movie uh for ways we can get into later it is about the kind of that juxtaposition of living under this totally kind of like like a government that has like thrown out all of the rules uh you know and i think there's one point where maura's character like is describing what happened to him and he's just so he's not outraged in like a kind of like blistering like angry way he's outraged in that way of just being like i'm so angry that i should have to even find myself in this situation it is so unjust but also so absurd Yeah. And I think the way that the film is careful to, you know, we have our hero, we have our antagonists, but even those antagonists are given these curious, humanizing anecdotes and vignettes. and, you know, the young assassin and, you know, his older colleague and these kind of corrupt policemen in town. Like, yes, they're bad guys, but also like they're also kind of looking out for each other and they're trying to get by in this horrid system that has sort of put them in this place. I mean, they're feeding off of it certainly more than other people are. But like the way that it shows this sort of sprawl of, you know, life during wartime, essentially like life, you know, that no very few people involved are these kind of cinematic monolithic villains they they are people who have been to varying degrees corrupted by something about them it's about something that we can obviously relate to now but it's also specifically about not only this past military dictatorship, but also the Bolsonaro regime. And Wagner Mora spoke about this when we saw him accept that award. You know, especially given, I think, a certain amount of national envy here about what happened, you know, how the response was to, you know, the Bolsonaro government and like the end of Bolsonaro government versus, you know, maybe certain more local. I mentioned Aquarius, the first of his films that I saw in 2016 at Cannes, and that is set in the present day with the great Sonia Braga living in Reisif. And that's very much smaller about some basic government officials trying to get her out of her beloved condo or her apartment so they can do some like gentrification, redistricting, whatever. and that you know compared to something like baccarat which is this violent you know sort of like pushback against predacious capitalism and whatever uh and and secret agent which is you know much more forceful in its sort of political you know intent aquarius seems sort of quaint and yet that was the movie during the bolsonaro government that had this huge protest at the at the you know i mean it was people were in support of the film but they had you know banners and all this stuff and and like yeah this has been on his mind the filmmaker's mind for a long time and it's interesting to see that in some ways only after the bolsonaro era had somewhat ended did he feel like he could go and make the film even though it's a period piece about a different regime uh that we felt that there was sort of more full-bodied about what that yeah i think it's also like uh it ties in a lot to a documentary he made uh three years ago called pictures of ghosts which was about Resifa and like, in this case, like a lot of his memories, but also specifically memories of like the movie palaces there, which is another theme that kind of ties into what happens in this movie. It was a film I really liked. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like one thing about this film also is like, I have kind of like broadly described it as a movie about like acts of resistance. And I think it is, but I think it is much more deliberately tying together. I mean, there's one part where, you know, Armando arrives at this apartment complex that is like kind of he's going to be sheltered there. And it turns out to be filled with all of these different people. Yeah. Like who are on the run from different things. And I think that is something that is very pointed about, which is to be like, there are some people here who have run afoul of the military dictatorship. There are other people who have come from like Angola. There is someone who is on the run from his like mean and like kind of like abusive, like homophobic, like father and uncle. There are people who are there for all different reasons. It is not just like and, you know, there's they have a conversation where one of them calls them refugees and someone else is like, we don't use that word. He's like, what else would you call us? It is less about kind of like taking like as opposed to say like one battle after another, which opens right with like these kind of like acts of like deliberate kind of like acts of activism, right? against the government. This is about people who have all been kind of like oppressed in different ways. And like, it is about the kind of like sanctuary they find together, but it is about like the people who help them. Yeah, yeah. And you get the sense, you know, that Armando, like his antagonist, this corrupt, is using the levers of corrupt government against him directly. Whereas in other of these sort of refugees cases, it's not so much that their antagonist has political sway or access. It's just that they can take advantage of a somewhat lawless system where they're like, you know, they could disappear you or they could, you know, there are bodies lying on the ground in front of gas stations. Like, who's going to really prosecute, you know? But yeah, the sense that like that this rot has not just sort of affected those who have direct or even somewhat indirect ties with the government, but just really it just it just affects how people view life and live life and um and then that he colors that with like donna sebastiana which is such a great character and and and then the helpers you know is so nice because it's like what a testament to people doing that then people doing it now yeah and that's a real parallel to one yeah and i think it probably is something that resonated with people a lot um before we get into spoiler territory i do want to shout out to uh one of my favorite ongoing threads in this film i mean one of them beyond like in a broader sense is just this like deep like love for brazilian culture in it like in kind of like a very distinctive um and like kind of like diverse and like singular celebration right uh up to and including carnival even while he's in this incredibly situation incredibly stressful situation there is a scene in which armando walks out into the street and carnival is happening everyone is partying and he like yeah he kind of like shimmies into the crowd in a way that's lovely my other favorite thread that is ongoing here um is just a kind of constant reminder just be like people be fucking yeah they're like multiple scenes in which they just kind of like walk in or like spot some people like having sex in uh sometimes public places why not bunches of public places why not you know no it's true i like yeah like that like life you know life carries on yeah yeah no it isn't to say that like these repressive you know governments should be tolerated but like but yeah there something survives yeah life does not stop yeah all right we're going to talk spoilers for the secret agent this section lasts about 23 and a half minutes if you want to skip ahead well biggest spoilers about the secret agent now that we are we are over the spoiler wall he's not a secret agent no i was going to say that is like one of the funniest things to be like, where does the title come from? And you're like, it comes from, I had to look up the name of this movie because I could not recognize it. Like it comes from a movie that is playing at his father-in-law's cinema, which is also an important location throughout the film that they keep returning to. It is the 1973 spy spoof, The Man from Acapulco, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jacqueline Bissette. Ah, okay. Yes, I looked through the credits for it. uh but yeah so so that i suppose uh in in brazil was released as a secret agent uh and so that is where the name comes from yeah but i mean like when the movie starts there is this moment where you're expecting him to turn out to be a spy or like a undercover part of some kind of like yeah yeah like political resistance yeah but i also think that there i mean maybe i'm maybe sitting in the back of the car with his dad that kid is looking at his mysterious father who disappeared for a while and be like, I think he might be a secret agent. There's a sort of awe almost projected from son to father about this. All the movie theater stuff is so much from Phil Hill's own life. That shot that pushes out through the window and looks at that is one of the most stunning shots of last year. It's so good. I make this comparison favorably. I realize it might not sound that way to other people. I see a lot of Roma in there. like the sense memory stuff and like the grand old, you know, movie palace kind of stuff. And like a real like, let me do the best I can to make manifest, you know, like you were saying, like distinct memories of like an egg on a table or, you know, whatever. Like the way that my dad looked in the rearview mirror, you know. The drawings he makes of like the son is obsessed with Jaws and keeps drawing these amazingly adorable photos photos of our pictures of sharks including like the poster like there's an incredible rendition of the jaws poster with like shark coming up yeah and it's funny to remember like and i don't think it's overstated in the film like that in the states too when that movie came out like it was like people had a really hard time dealing with the violence of that movie and the and the suspense of that movie like people vomiting and running out of the theater and fainting and all that that was real yeah um no i like that the people who kind of like they watch the omen and they come out and they're like i might be possessed uh in the lobby it's just like a background thing going on um i i appreciate that yeah so so this is a movie that is not about a secret agent we but for a long stretch because he is like operating under the kind of like certain like what we expect from someone who is like maybe undercover on the run but undercover you know like yes he is meeting with contacts they're setting him up with different things he's like they're setting him up with a job at like the identification card office right and that makes him put in the orbit of the corrupt chief of police which he doesn't want to to know about there's a sense of mission here yes yes and then that all kind of slowly dissolves the further we get because we learn he's not like the thing he's trying to achieve is intensely personal right and like what we're doing here is not some kind of like mission on behalf of some other force it is him active memory is an active memory is him trying to get this card, this identification card of his mother and the context of which we do not learn until the very end of the movie. But he is willing to risk so much like his personal safety to find this card before he and his son flee the country. Because there was a very real chance and it happened where their memory would be totally wiped from existence in a way, as if they were never there. Yeah. I think one of the great moments in this movie is when we learn we we do not learn until literally years in the future you know in the coda which skips ahead to uh you know a present day uh where we have his son now played by lagner mora yeah um in this incredible i think like double role that is like very carefully delineated but uh he explains that um his grandmother uh armando's mother was the daughter of like the housekeeper in this house and uh basically at 14 was impregnated by the son the 17 year old son had a baby the baby looked white enough as he said like he kind of like lays that out right his his mother was nicknamed india he was beautiful so they kept him they took him away from her right and she had no choice about keeping him or no say about that at all and they raised him in this kind of like more moneyed family uh so that was it like the only trace he has of his mother's existence is this identity card yeah yeah exactly um when he's playing the son yes did you i've heard two schools have thought about this do you think he's playing it as gay i someone mentioned that to me as a as a as a possible reading um i the the time i rewatched it this time with that in mind i feel like it's it it's not there or it could be there yeah like i feel People were like, oh, no, it's so interesting that he had the son be gay when he's an adult. And I was like, oh, was that a thing in the movie? I don't think that – I don't think it is – the way he plays that character repels that reading. But I do not think it is, like, obviously. I'm not sure that's – Yeah, right. I just don't think there's – It's definitely not tax. I don't think there's tax. I've had people say it to me with such conviction. I think that if that were the case, I would – I guess you could understand it as, like, just further evidence of, like, look how far the country's come. like you know like like progress has been made in some arenas not and others you know whatever like that this gay out gay man whatever you know um but it's just like a funny little added theory about that the end of that movie one thing that i love about that scene and how it's scripted is that when he's recounting some of his experiences he misremembers things that we have already seen happen in the film where i think he talks about how um he had wanted to go see jaws his father says absolutely not he's like you know like he already has nightmares all the time it's a grandfather who wants to bring him to see it yeah right and then in his mind and then when he retells it he reverses that which you know goes back to all of these themes about memory and and how like if we don't speak the things if we don't have the id card if we don't talk about the man under the cardboard at the gas station, then we lose these things and we don't have them at all. And then we repeat them. Yeah. You know, because we repeat the bad stuff because we didn't learn from them. Yeah, no, I think there is a tremendous worry about what the cost is of just effacing history. Like, obviously, time goes on, right? It's not supposed to be the movie theater the movie keeps returning to, but another movie theater, the theater where he says he saw Jaws is now the blood bank that he's working at as a doctor. yeah uh and that's like a real thing from uh pictures of ghosts like that was really a movie theater that that the director had gone to movies at as a kid and is now a blood bank um but yeah like i think there is so much about the ways in which it's easy to kind of like manipulate the record historical record and then to manipulate memory that way right because like i mean even like that is like so it's it's kind of uh mora like under delivers it and it makes it even more devastating when he tells flavia this this researcher who has been listening to tapes of his father you know like you remember my father better than i do like even this horrible image of like him as a child on the day that his father turns out to be killed shot in the street like waiting for his father to pick him up you know he tells a story and he's like i don't remember it myself i know i've created like this you know kind of like like standard memory because my grandfather told me this but like i don't remember it yeah and i do think that there is uh definitely i like i currently i like to do this set up strongman movies that don't exist but there is a worst movie a worst version of this movie that's like we see him gunned down the boy is just in out of reach and he falls dead on the street in front of his son even like it's intercut like he's trying to get there yeah he's waiting and like he never knows instead like in a way that i think really does risk alienation with american viewers well a lot of and it did me at first i was confused is like we only find out that he got shot and killed from a photograph when the movie has fully moved into the present tense you know and we never see that there is no resolution to even did it happen that day like an hour later to 10 minutes later like we see the one assassin see his dead colleague and then kind of disappeared it's like oh i guess the understanding is he caught up with him and killed him yeah but like um you know it it it's it's so blunt but i think that's so effective because that's exactly how in some ways it was how it was experienced by the son it was not in sight it was just something he heard about and maybe maybe he saw that newspaper photograph at some point but like it's an abstraction to him in a way yeah well i think you know like the the kind of most outsized version of that is hairy leg right which is the story that the newspapers run with in this like kind of outrageous tabloid uh you know like supernatural story where they're claiming that this um leg just like a kind of like severed leg is menacing people who are cruising in this various spots and like everyone who reads the story the newspaper story can read between the lines and know that it's like people who are cruising but like um yes and then this leg attacks people and this is like a huge newspaper story like all of the newsboys are like clamoring for that because they know it's going to sell so well and then when you get that kind of final scene in which bobby like the one of the two assassins is like killed and they put the newspaper over him you see the headline it's like carnival deaths are up to like 91 yeah and you're like oh that was sort of a distraction from like the actual ongoing violence that is happening you know like the leg in question is right it's alluded to that that that's the leg of someone that was killed illegally by the police or at least disposed of right right except then when they build out the hairy leg uh mythology eventually hairy leg is the one stealing the leg from the morgue so then it becomes like you're like wait are there multiple legs out there what is going on but yeah i mean like the when you actually see the rendering of hairy leg like like a like a stop motion monster movie right like jumping around and like kicking people in the face a shocking scene just because it is so it's almost like you are in a movie within the movie yeah it's it looks completely different it feels the music is different like the music is like monster like throwback monster movie music um and it's really funny but it's it's also funny that it is left to like pretty late in the movie also like you know i think the ways in which this movie unfolds and the way in which it event like it waits so long to let you know why armando is on the run and like being hunted, you know, like has like literally a hit out on his head, you know. And some might say I mean I have heard the criticism It does try patience a bit Like it not as fast as a movie as it maybe sells itself as at the beginning It takes a long time to really find out what the hell is going on. Yeah, no, it is not. It does not unfold in a conventional way at all. Which, again, is why it's surprising that it's gotten all this Oscar attention. Yeah, I think like that scene where Armando finally just talks like to the head of this kind of like, you know, group of like helping people get out of the country. uh like just tells the story of what happened is so good like you know i don't know what uh we i don't know if you've mentioned but like vagnar moore is obviously nominated for best actor like what his like snippet is going to be but i have to imagine it's going to has to be from that scene i would think he's so great in it like like the particular version of outrage he expresses yes is like it's like i am so upset that not just what was done to me yes but like that it should have been able to happen at all. Like, I am so offended by the kind of, like, brash corruption of this man. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can see where his nomination comes in. I think also the coda with him playing another character helps. But also, I think the real triumph of the Academy in regards to this movie is like, the best casting nomination. Like, it's the first time they've done this category. Everyone was like, well, how's this going to work? Is it just going to be like it is it turns out five best picture nominees hopefully in the years to come they can think a bit more broadly about like what specifically is working casting wise in a movie it doesn't just have to be i like that ensemble from a best picture nominee but in the secret agent's case they could have gone a different direction with casting there were you know four other choices but like um this movie is so beautifully populated like from the woman who does the interviewing to donna sebastiana to these gangsters to the kid to the leg to whatever like it's just it's a it's and i i would have to imagine that the the branch nominating it for casting has not worked with this brazilian casting director before she's they're not a colleague of you know theirs but they just see how beautifully uh you know everyone fits so perfectly into this tapestry um i think that's for me that's the coolest nomination it got yeah it is really i mean because the casting is amazing like this this movie has an enormous cast of like memorable faces and voices and yeah you know and bodies honestly like one of the things i love is just like how many bodies like and types of bodies you see on screen uh but yeah like these are there are a lot of actors that he's worked with before there are a lot of repeat faces from baccarau for instance um like he clearly has yeah and then terrific in this like single sequence in which he plays a jewish man brings to all this other brazilian history and like of course like world war ii like you know like it wasn't just the nazis who fled to South America. There were tons of other people from Europe who ended up there. And that he doesn't turn that into some sort of bit of didactic, like, this is also part of the tapestry of this city and this country. It's like, no, no, that's another movie, but I just want to touch on it briefly, you know, and effectively. Yeah, and just also the ways in which the police chief just kind of has no interest in understanding what this man's actual background is. They're just like, show us your scars. Like, yeah, you must be a soldier. And you're like, he wasn't a soldier. that this is not where those scars came from but um uh yeah that scene is terrific special mention for dona sebastiana yeah oh she's so good uh maria tanya maria tanya maria yeah yeah she's amazing that's the one thing that that would be like i mean it would take a lot for the oscars to pay attention to a performance that's like that far down in the this is why we need our special appearance we need the third oscar she's like the perfect yeah she's so wonderful she's so she like especially contrast to um wagner just like she's so tiny and do we know anything about her she was in buckarau as well um she it's funny she's listed as an actress artisan and seamstress on wikipedia um but might just be some colorful character yeah like i i i think the first like the buckarau seems to be her first acting credit so uh you know she was just someone that he found uh and she seems to have like an amazing kind of like storied life uh and her character has an amazing storied life uh one of my favorite lines of hers is when she says you know like i did i did three things in italy when i was in italy during the war and i'm not going to tell you what they are but i had to do them yeah you're like oh she's been through so much she's done so much what did you think of the the sort of wraparound story with the two researchers who you don't really know they kind of pop in for the first time maybe halfway through and you don't really know why they're listening to these tapes at first i was like are they making a podcast no i mean it is a wild that is like even more so than harry leg i think is like the wildest jump when like halfway through the movie we suddenly leaped like decades to these two characters who's never seen before who are listening to audio tapes and even the shock of seeing modern technology you're like whoa wait a second like yeah yeah but i think that like the way that it works so well when it arrives because it's like you know this mounting worry that there will be no kind of acknowledgement or reckoning with this past at all because in the present in the 70s present tense of the movie like they all feel so swallowed up by this thing that there's a sense of comfort and sadness when you're like okay so like this is all at least known by these two you know researchers or whatever like at least someone is but it also like just becomes i think for one of them it is like the thing she does for her job you know it is like unusual that flavia is like there are still people attached to this that i can find through great effort right like um but that but that that's a job at all seems of value right like like even that is like right you're like all of this to the grace of uh you know this yes like daughter of a wealthy corrupt saupala family who decided to invest her money into this kind of underground, including taking documentation, which is never explained why she is invested in that. But yeah, you're like, oh, that is the only reason why we have this chorus of voices, you know, documenting this time. Because like, one of the things about being an underground kind of like, this underground world is that there is no kind of public facing history of that, right? Like, like, it is at the time, you have to live in secret, this is all being done in secret. So yeah, those audio tapes become, you know, the only record. And I think you feel in the movie the delicacy with which, like, you know, like real historical record versus like the kind of history that then gets created officially. Yeah. And I do think that that kind of present tense framing device like runs the risk of being a little bit like not gimmicky, but a bit like. A little cloying or something. I've seen some criticisms of this movie that kind of say something to that effect, like we didn't really need this. It kind of it telegraphs what the movie is about too much. I kind of, on second viewing, I disagree. I think it's deployed effectively and with restraint enough that even the sort of more sentimental ending with this meeting of these two people who, you know, seem to be bridging all these different divides, and I think it works because, similar to the sort of unseen death of Armando, like, the direction the writing doesn't sort of just overplay it. It's... No, I think one of the things that makes it so... heartbreaking is the way that mora plays that second character you know like in this he's kind of indifferent to it just like he's like i cannot pretend to like feel these enormous like you know like feelings of grief this person is gone from my memory you know like like he is only a concept to me now like you understand him as a person more than i do you're like that's such a sad thing it's also a very real thing yeah i think when i've done documentary projects and stuff I've interviewed people and and this that happens where it's like, you know, you know more about the subject than they do. You want something from them. Yeah. That they can't always give you. Yeah. Both on an emotional level and on a textual level of like, I need this for my work or just my personal self-knowledge, self-satisfaction. satisfaction. But life moved on for him. And both Armando and Flavia are doing a homecoming to find something. He's looking for this identity card for his mother. Flavia's looking to just kind of make a connection with this family she's been essentially listening to or one member of. And he basically tells her, he's like, oh, I don't know, life moved on. Yes, I know it was a big thing and I appreciate that you care about it, but Like, I can't dwell on that, you know? And I think also he's just like, that's just not the life. You know, like, I was raised by my grandfather. He is who I think of as my father like that. Yeah. Before we, I do want to talk a bit more about Wagner Mora. But before we do that, I did want to ask you, in light of our earlier conversation, do you feel like this movie is built with international audiences in mind? It doesn't feel that way to me. I mean, I can't infer anyone's intent behind the camera. But like it, I think because of the sort of like the plotting that is a bit obfuscating, the strangeness of it, the deep from what I understand, like this sort of I hate to use this fucking term, but like the sort of deep roster of like Easter eggs for like like references to Brazilian culture and history and very specific stuff. No, I think it's made for Brazilians because obviously they're the ones who are going to, you know, feel it most potently. yeah i think you know it's great that it does it has appeal beyond that yeah i mean i one of the things i appreciate is that it does not kind of do the very heavy-handed like um here's a note i mean like even the opening like crawl of text right is like uh it's brazil in 1977 it's a period of great mischief and it's not like the military dictator you know like um so i had a funny thing happen at my screening yeah um you know they're pretty solemn ending um the credits roll a woman stands up and shouts viva brazil okay all right like to the crowd yeah and it sort of got me thinking about how the characters in this movie kind of talk about how much they hate brazil constantly like they're trying you know it's like they're very put upon living in this place where they are oppressed and yet the movie so clearly loves brazil yes like their parties in the streets it's so colorful it has a sense of national pride yeah and nobody is standing up at the end of one battle after another and saying like god bless america well yeah you don't know that yeah and and i just kind of think i was cheering on team usa and the figure skating though you know like during the Olympics. I can understand some degree of that duality. I mean, obviously, in this case, it's much more about national identity than it is like these kids are skating well. I mean, what is a song that one battle after another ends on? Yeah. So I think maybe we're also in a place right now where maybe most of us are not inclined to stand up and yell. God bless America. We're having a hard time understanding what national pride means and how to have national pride if we should have it at all um and i just found it kind of inspiring that this artist was able to make a movie that is both self-critical and proud of itself the more i talk about this movie the more i think it is like just a stone-cold masterpiece yeah no i i think it's a tremendous movie and i think you are totally correct i think like one of its greatest strengths is the like boundless wells of affection it has for the culture and people and landscape of this country. And that's the sadness about the fact that it has to be so marred and derailed and harmed and made ugly on the international stage by this cabal of horrible military politicians and stuff. In that long-lived Brazil, there's also a sadness and a defiance and a rage there. all right wagner mora yeah uh there is like a part of me that is like if anyone pulls an upset in in best actor which everyone has been like it's timmy's you know like timmy's gonna get it uh it would be wagner who i don't know that any of us would have called as like the a nominee you know like even a few months before like uh that like watching him kind of like rise through the ranks in terms of all of these kind of the praise he was getting, but also certain precursor awards where you're like, oh, it's going to happen. He's going to get a nomination. Yeah, they clearly like that movie, The Academy, and I do think that, you know, usually we think of a vote split happening between people from the same movie, but in this case, can two frontrunners in Chalamet and DiCaprio, presumably, can they split it? And there comes this, you know, yeah, I could see it. I mean, I think that last year, yes, the conversation was very much like Mikey versus Demi Moore. But I think that Fernanda Torres from I'm Still Here, I think she came pretty close. I mean, she won the Golden Globe. She won the Globe, which doesn't always mean anything. But I think if that movie had had two, three more weeks, momentum, there would have been a much, much tougher competition. It was just that I'm Still Here sort of arrived kind of late in the consciousness for a lot of voters. Whereas I think that Secret Agent has a lot more time to linger for a variety of, you know, like it was at Cannes, you know, a while ago. Neon did a good job of making sure people saw it. I mean, that's reflected in the amount of nominations it got. And so that means that Mora is probably way more front of mind than Fernanda Torres was. The history of actors winning in languages, in performances that are in languages other than English is like, it's a fairly limited one, you know, though, as you mentioned, like they're like, we are in a moment of like a much more kind of like slow but a long long incoming uh opening up of of not just best picture but these other categories to to uh non-english language films we had what you shouldn't young for minari right yeah zoe saldana show of course yeah that is largely a spanish-speaking role that's yeah yeah and then i don't you go back to like Marion Cotillard, Roberto Benigni. There are some angels in this city. Roberto Benigni. Unforgettable. You know if you go and sit in the old Oscar auditorium, you can still feel him dancing on the seats behind you. Yes. I do wonder. I believe that there's been a whole goddamn Olympics in Italy and they have not sent him falling down a fucking ski jump hill. Just doing a pratfall. Why is he not doing pratfalls all over the place? Yeah, why isn't he the mascot? They're giving all the winners this little stuffed stoat or weasel or whatever. And it's like, no, it should be Benigni. I know. Did he do that acceptance speech for nothing? I know. I wonder if he's fallen out of favor. Yeah, the truth is I have not kept up with what Roberto Benigni has been up to lately. Well, guess what? Our guest next week. We're going to look this up and it's going to be like, he is a serial killer. He is a close advisor to Giorgio Maloney. like you're like oh okay um but but i do think that um like one thing that mora has as an advantage is that he is he has been in he like lives in la with his family you know he has been in a bunch of uh american productions like he is someone that like craftspeople are aware of and narcos was big as a very popular yeah like that was like one of those yeah like netflix giving one of those flickers of like the last gas of monoculture right like um every once in a while Netflix is like one of the last places capable of pulling that off. The tractor beam pulled in like middle-aged ads. Exactly. Here we go. Oh, then you're like, you'd hear people talking about it in the wild, which is not always the case. No, your Netflix. No, that definitely is to his advantage. That's true. Yeah. So, uh, do I think it's going to happen? I don't know that I'm feeling that, but like, uh, I, I think if, if there is an upset, it would be him. Like, uh, if someone does not. Yeah, no, I know. I think a hundred percent. And I do think that like DiCaprio's disadvantage is like a certain, kind of more like legacy fatigue of like oh we gave that kid the thing 10 years ago he's not a kid anymore like what like he's part of the club he you know bangs all these young models and his makes 20 million dollars a movie like i don't want to give him another award and then timmy it's like oh he's too young and like cool and my daughter is obsessed with him whatever you know right whereas here comes this like solid man you know like well like warmth the warmth kind of nice masculinity you know in this like big like even in the movie there are characters who's like see that is a man i could i could see all members of you know different you know quadrants of the of the academy being like that's our guy yeah yeah that'd be thrilling i mean that would be thrilling i would be i'm i'm i think i'm still kind of weirdly rooting for chalamet even though like and like think of chalamet what would become of her if if you didn't win i mean i'd be very worried she'd be under a piece of cardboard outside of gas station she would just put herself there just like kind of crawl there yeah yeah um yeah so uh you know i i i would not be sad if that happens no offense to timmy who i think is incredible and marty supreme but the closer we get to the ceremony i mean we're only a few weeks away i am in full like just surprise me mode yeah like after watching the spirit awards were like it was like the winners were like kind of like okay so train dreams for director you know it felt kind of i mean i was thrilled for rose burn winning but like okay you know like i would i mean if she wanted the oscars holy cow that would be that would be crazy but like i just i want surprises now and maura would be both that but also something i could actually like root for yeah before we go i wanted to do our weekly il postino corner oh yeah okay yeah do you have the electrodes to strap to allison's head well i don't have the electrodes all the time now but i do have so i did some digging yeah um to try and find this study yeah so you went to the records office posed to someone else yeah well i actually you know i did a little bit of search through the literature sure i mean you are a research professional sort of yeah well thank you i should also say that a blankie on the subreddit also dug this up so it's not like yeah it's an incredible feat of uh research but so anyway well maybe we should remind people oh yeah what actually when i was an undergrad i did a lot of psych experiments for money they would like literally pay you cash for you come in and participate in this uh and one of the most involved ones that i did which paid more money than the other ones um for obvious reasons as uh is that i got electrodes strapped to me and i had to wear headphones and then i was i watched like i think like 15 or 20 minutes of il postino uh with the subtitles on because we established this was years after that movie yeah years after i don't know how they ended up they landed on il postino yeah and then every once in a while i would hear like a loud noise in the headphones or i would get a mild electric shock and then afterwards and they never and then they were like go home you know i think they did then quiz me about details in the movie so i think the idea was that it was supposed to affect like like how much this destruction like uh affected my ability to follow the opening of the film yeah so i was able to find multiple references to to the use of il postino as a film used in psychological experiments no and but the only experiment that i could find that was sort of close uh was one called orbitofrontal cortex and dynamic filtering of emotional stimuli um which was performed at the university of california berkeley oh not from where you're from i this is true i think that you may have been in a mirror experiment because it sounds very similar let's see the set of auditory stimuli consisted of 144 environmental sounds train whistle dog bark. Each sound was unique and thus was presented only once during the experiment. To maintain a relatively constant level of arousal, the subjects watched a movie with the audio off, Il Postino, with subtitles. During stimulus presentation, we obtained EEG recordings with electrodes placed on three midline scalp locations. But they don't say shock, do they? I don't think they say shock. And it says that after the experiment, if either Angela Lansbury or Meryl Streep called anybody and said a certain set of words, they would assassinate a president. Or they would become a film critic. It was like a horrifying side effect of this. And that's why they wiped the experiment from the records after that, because they were like, what have we done? Anyway, I just thought you would maybe be interested to know that you were part of a long tradition of Il Pistino related to it. I think the great relief is just that I wasn't participating in someone's highly specific kink. It was weird afterwards. This is in a basement and he has to take pictures of my feet. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, to feel like there's actual academic backing here. I would like to get to the bottom of what the reasoning for that particular movie, because that's pretty random, even in the early 2000s. I just like it. Maybe psych departments across the nation. There's a sexy element to it. And maybe the other language element is part of the sort of cognitive thing. I don't know. But that's fascinating. I wish I had done that. Thank you. I appreciate your love. Validated this is my backstory. Yeah. Now, 30 years from now, when some girl shows up to ask you about your life experience, it's like, well, it all goes back to this one moment. What are we doing next week? Oh, so, uh, we're going to get on an SAS flight from Sao Paulo all the way up to Oslo, where we're going to be talking about sentimental value. The last of our two. Not exactly which features. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have a special guest for that, which is very exciting. Um, no one streaming. you can rent it at the $9.99 level so I think it's worth it maybe watch it with a couple people split up the cost if you want to we'll be doing that and then if you're doing your homework doing your math at home that will leave two more movies to talk about before we get to the Oscars which we would argue are the two biggies so we'll see you here next week Thank you.