Photo: Band playing in the street in Recife, Brazil – 2025.
In 2025 there were many foreign films that gained a world-wide audience. The Brazilian movie “The Secret Agent” and the Iranian “It Was Just and Accident” were actually nominated for Academy Awards next to the Hollywood blockbusters. In the end, a very flawed Hollywood movie “One Battle After Another,” with a budget of $130–175 million, walked away with all kinds of awards including Best Picture. This short essay examines these three films and reflects on how art has the ability to either illuminate universal truths about the human condition or obfuscate realities and history.
We live in a time of rising authoritarianism. In the United States, Donald Trump sees himself more as a king than a president. He thinks he can simply “disappear” his enemies, levy tariffs on a whim, do backdoor deals with oligarchs and CEOs, rape women and not be held accountable, declare wars without senate approval – the list is long. While Iran has been living with kings and ayatollahs for many years, Brazil has had its own history of authoritarianism with a military dictatorship (1964–1985) following a U.S.-backed coup. The Brazilian movie “The Secret Agent” and the Iranian “It Was Just and Accident” are historical fiction pieces that examine this authoritarianism in their respective countries. The tensions in these movies between the different sides are very real and the characters embody a complexity that elevates the works to great art.
On the other hand “One Battle After Another,” is more of a Hollywood fantasy-thriller movie that embraces and perpetuates stereotypes that are current U.S. republican Fox “News” network talking points. The plot centers around a far-left revolutionary group, the French 75 that uses violence to attempt to forward their political agenda. They rob banks and create havoc in the streets. One cannot help but think that this French 75 is really a stand-in to republicans’ imaginary Antifa. Teyana Taylor plays a convincing Perfidia but her character is pure fantasy. In the course of human history, a powerful sexy woman of color dominating a testosterone-heavy, military goon (Steven J. Lockjaw as played by Sean Penn) is probably something that has literally never happened. More often it is exactly the other way around with men abusing women. This raping and abuse of women has gone on since the beginning wars. The movie also normalizes the military being used against civilians without warrants. Like ICE agents in Minneapolis, we see FBI agents in military helicopters storming the “insurgents.” It is all a bit silly and cartoonish but in our current times has been normalized. Of course the FBI agents are so incompetent that the person they are looking for in the woods (the cannabis-infused Leonardo DiCaprio) escapes through a tunnel. I mean, really? How stupid are these FBI guys? There are other things that make the film unbelievable (e.g. DiCaprio falling four stories off a building and not breaking a bone.) In the end, his daughter, Charlene escapes from the clutches of the racist white men’s club, takes up the mantel of the revolution and drives off to Oakland – a not too subtle reference to Black Panther party who bore arms and kept watch over the police. In doing so, the movie perpetuates a J. Edgar Hoover paranoid and racist notion that Black Panthers were all about violence, when in reality they were about uplifting marginalized communities through education and free breakfasts. Film often is a statement about the political atmosphere during their making and “One Battle After Another” is just that. Like a corporate-owned newspaper “One Battle After Another” touches on all the mainstream talking points. For such and expensive film, it actually says very little and what it does say it does poorly.
In contrast, the Iranian “It Was Just and Accident” says a lot with very little. The film was made illegally without a permit in Iran by Jafar Panahi and it opens with someone wanting to bury his torturer alive. No big sets and explosions needed – just one vengeful man digging a grave to bury his nemesis in a desert on the edge of town. Through many scenes, involving many people and situations the movie takes on the timeless themes of revenge, forgiveness, marriage, death and birth with the final message of sometimes people simply need a job to survive. People will do atrocious things for money as they have survive and feed their families. In fifty years “It Was Just and Accident” will stand the test of time and will become a classic.
The “The Secret Agent” combines an amazing script with excellent acting. In the United States the military dictatorships in Brazil seem to be something forgotten but “The Secret Agent” brings this history to life. The amazing cast (this film should have won the Casting award) was full of both memorable and spot-on characters starting with the lead actor Wagner Moura. Every person seems suited for their characters, especially the hit men who are out to take out Moura’s Armando. From the boss Luciano Chirolli who hires Roney Villela to do the job, who then hires Kaiony Venâncio – it is surely more like how things work in the real world of organized crime. The chain of command is surreptitious with each person covering their asses, hiring an underling and taking a large cut. In the end you get a desperate person to do the dirty deed for very little money. From the beginning scene, a dead person under a piece of cardboard outside a gas station, to the end, the film is a thriller that is entirely believable – save for the hairy leg theme. No spoilers.
While “One Battle After Another” is about product placements, stereotypes, misconstrued history and Leonardo DiCaprio dropping the f-bomb over and over (this is quality scriptwriting?), “It Was Just and Accident” and “The Secret Agent” deal successfully with deeper more timeless themes. In the end “It Was Just and Accident” is about forgiveness. With “The Secret Agent” it comes down to memories, how they are shaped and how technology has such a huge impact on what we remember. The world is presently at war. Eventually, everyone will need to pick up the pieces. Forgiveness and how the history is told will be uppermost in our minds.