Q&A WITH KLEBER MENDONÇA FILHO

Q. Your film contends with a moment of heightened corruption and oppression in Brazilian history, but chooses to keep its focus on the culture that flourished under these conditions. What motivated this approach of yours to the period?

A. I think this is the first time I’m going to say something, which has just occurred to me, but has always been in the back of my mind. One day, when I was a teenager, I was walking home and I saw a box with many personal letters thrown in the trash. I took them home and started going through them. Many letters dated back to the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and they made interesting references to culture — to films the writer had seen and films they recommended their friends should go see. Besides the fact that I was trespassing into someone’s private life and reading their personal letters, I found it interesting that this person was connected to culture. Many years later, a friend of mine found a diary, also in the trash, written by a man who associated his romantic affairs with films he saw and the films they saw together.

The idea of talking about the past through culture has always been in the back of my head. It’s something I find much more important and human than discussing the well-known aspects of dictatorships like torture, people getting arrested, uniforms, and electric shocks. When you discuss a certain time, you want to discuss the way people live, feel, and react to things. I was more interested in reconstructing a sense of time than reenacting real-life events.

Q. Popular cinema and its influence on culture remains central to your work, as seen in your previous documentary, Pictures of Ghosts, and the influence of genre on The Secret Agent. What is it about popular filmmaking that you consider essential to your practice?

A. My point of entry into cinema was going to huge movie palaces that were packed when I was a child and when I was a teenager. Recife didn’t have many cinemas, but the ones we had were quite wonderful. There was a pressure on each and every screening room to seat as many people as possible. Cinemas were always packed, and that’s how I was introduced to the idea of popular cinema.

For me, popular cinema meant watching Brazilian comedies as a child. The Trapalhões films, for example, were seen by millions of kids during the holidays. Or, going to see Full Metal Jacket on opening day at the great Vanessa Cinema with 900 students trying to disrupt the screening. But, once the film begins — with the men getting their heads shaved — everybody shuts up because they become overpowered by the film. To me, that is the power of popular cinema. Watching Jeanne Dielman with fifteen people in the audience is an amazing experience, but Die Hard with a thousand people and amazing sound is also an amazing experience.

I’m fascinated by the whole popular experience of cinema. Those films made me. Sometimes, as I write a script, I might remember a late-night commercial from when I was a kid, sometimes I might remember Godard’s La Chinoise, or Sergio Leone’s Giù la testa and the way he used widescreen and Techniscope. All of that is relevant to me. As I write, all these things come together.

I read reviews of my films on Letterboxd, because I’m curious about how the work interacts with people. Many people mention many different films and I think that’s an accurate representation of my films. From Godard to Carpenter. From Glauber Rocha to Spielberg. Wes Craven. George Miller. In a way, they made me. All of them. I have no problem bringing them into my work, as long as the results are my films and not just pastiche.

Q. The Secret Agent has a complex narrative structure that moves across different time periods. Is there a reason you wanted to put Brazil’s recent history in conversation with its present?

A. There are two well-known structures. One is more common: the very clear framing device where we would begin with Flavia in 2025 listening to tapes, and then zooming in on her face would take us to the past. Some old-fashioned films would even use the classic “water ripple” transition. I didn’t want that. I wanted to welcome you into 1977, sink you into the warm water of 1977, and make you swim in it. And then, to have you realize you’re not in the ocean, but in a tank. A tank of time. And, that there’s somebody examining you.

Cinema has this incredibly fascinating special effect, which is really inexpensive: the cut. Kubrick, of course, is a classic example. You can make one cut and suddenly we’re in another time period. My film plays with that many times. There’s one scene when they’re watching The Omen and the audience is screaming, and those screams interrupt a conversation. Then Flavia, in the future, reacts to the screaming the same way they react to the screaming in 1977.

Q. What have you been listening to lately?

A. Thelonious Monk. Underground and Solo Monk.

I’ve also been listening to a lot of Tropicália. While mixing The Secret Agent, I rediscovered 1976’s Paêbirú by Lula Cortes and Zé Ramalho. I used two tracks from it in the film.

Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?

A. It Was Just an Accident. I was also very moved by Akinola Davies’ My Father’s Shadow. That was a beautiful film.

In August, I had the chance to see Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in a cinema for the first time. Near my home, in 35mm. I had only seen it on DVD before. It’s an amazing feeling to see this film in the cinema.

Q. If you could choose to organize one retrospective, whose would it be?

A. Eduardo Coutinho. He’s a Brazilian documentarian. Brazil has a number of masterpieces, but his film, Man Marked for Death: 20 Years Later, is my favorite. To me, it is the most amazing Brazilian film that has ever been made. The strongest and the most beautiful. Whenever I’m asked to do a carte blanche, I always include this film in my list. It’s going to happen again at Film at Lincoln Center.

Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?

A. The last shot of Udo Kier in The Secret Agent. It’s beautiful and fitting for him. We made two films together, and I loved him very much. He had a Dionysian quality to his personality. He was very much about pleasure, being frank, a little chaotic, and a little transgressive.

In the last shot, he’s looking up at the night sky during Carnaval. The light catches on his big blue eyes. He’s kind of in the middle of a trance. It’s his final moment in cinema, and he made over 200 films.

I’m happy for him. He lived life to the fullest. That’s what I came to understand from being his friend. And that image, of Udo enjoying life, partying, dancing, and looking up, happens to come from my film.