THE SECRET AGENT: The Pain of Childhood Loss: “I Don’t Remember”
A death threat hanging over you isn’t always about an assassin. Even though an assassin was after Armando (AKA Marcel Alves) in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film, The Secret Agent. But there’s so much more. When you’re terrified of loss after loss, it’s like the Grim Reaper follows you around. You’re waiting for someone else to be taken away, but you can’t let yourself know. Like Fernando, Armando’s little boy. You can forget you were waiting for your dad to come. That makes pieces of yourself disappear. The Secret Agent isn’t just a political film. It’s what happens to your memory when loss is too much to bear. And, how remembering puts the pieces of you back together again.
Childhood Loss & “Disappearing” Memory
The Secret Agent begins with a dead body. That’s the first thing Marcelo Alves/Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) sees when he stops for gas as he returns to Recife in his yellow VW bug. It’s a warning and a jog for the memory of his losses. It’s not like he doesn’t know. It’s that he has to go on anyway, and the way he goes on is to shut down his feelings. That’s a form of forgetting, not knowing how sad you are. Sometimes you forget your feelings, so that you can feel strong. Like how nonchalant the gas station attendant is when he speaks of how the man was killed, and about the man himself. It’s like the man who once inhabited the body is not worthy of feeling.
That’s not how Marcelo/Armando feels. But sadness can be too hard to live with. You keep it to yourself. Maybe that’s the best explanation of how and why Marcelo Alves/Armando Solimões is a secret agent. Living with secrets. Because, driving away from the body, a song is playing.
These lyrics say it all:
If you leave me now
You'll take away the biggest part of me
Ooh, no, baby, please don't go
And if you leave me now
You'll take away the very heart of me
Ooh, no, baby, please don't go
A love like ours is love that's hard to find
Marcelo/Armando has a box with a photo of a child, a boy, along with his passport. The boy is his son, Fernando, who wants to see Jaws. He’s drawing sharks, and he’s with his grandpa and grandma. His grandpa says he can’t see Jaws because he’ll have nightmares. He says he already has nightmares. Fernando’s nightmare is his mom’s death and his dad not being with him.
Then Marcelo/Armando shows up at the door. He hugs them. His mother-in-law says, “If I had any peace left, it’s gone. Is it safe for you to be here?” “I’m going to see Fernando.” He must.
Fernando tells him, “I saw a human leg in the shark’s mouth on grandpa‘s TV.” His dad laughs. They talk about sewing it back on. Fernando asks, “Can Mom be here with us?” Armando says that she’s with them in memory. “When we think about someone else, it’s like having them with us.” “But can she come back?” “No son. Mom got sick and died. She’s not coming back.” Fernando says, “That’s so sad, isn’t it?” He says, “It is, but you and I are here. And mom is also with us. Our memory of her is … I’m not living with you now only because I can’t. I came here for that reason. All right? For us to live and be together forever. You and me.” Armando fights back his sadness.
Pensive music plays. “I love to love you, baby…” Can Armando hold onto himself?
Losing Parts of You: A Hairy Leg & A Shark
It’s hard to hold onto yourself when loving someone makes you sad. It’s not the love that’s sad. It’s the loss. It’s the not being able to be together. It’s the threat of more loss. It’s the thinking you can’t feel because you have to be strong. Believing that feeling might make you too weak.
That can seem safer. It really isn’t. When you can’t feel, you lose big parts of yourself.
Like the hairy leg (and the shark.) As far as trauma goes, featuring a hairy leg and a shark in The Secret Agent, is most certainly about the threat of flashbacks. The threat of those hidden parts of you that still lurk around. Following you. Like a leg still capable of walking. But with no head attached. As if you might not have to know your thoughts and feelings. Like the men reading a newspaper say about a human leg found in a shark: “As long as there’s only a leg, we’re safe.”
It's the whole memory that seems dangerous. Which is why you might use projection (putting what scares you inside – out there, into something or someone else). Projection is a creative survival tactic when you need it. Maybe that’s why Fernando’s grandpa, Mr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), is a projectionist in the film? Because when those memories come back too quickly, they can make you feel like you’re going crazy; they are so disturbing to your equilibrium. Like the people in the theater and on the streets are going crazy when they watch Jaws. Memory can feel like that shark. It’s sudden surfacing. And then the “attack.” The threat of it. Of more loss.
When you lose people you love and need, here’s what happens.
You’re left with a big hole.
Dona Sebastiana: Managing “The Hole”
Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) knows about holes. She lives with one, too. The hole where her much-loved niece, Geisha, used to be. Killed by her jealous lover. Dona Sebastiana takes political refugees in. She helps them to manage their own holes. And, so, she gives Marcelo/Armando a room to stay. In his room are two cats, Eliza and Elis. “Do they come with the apartment?” Marcelo asks. Sort of. When her niece Geisha went away, she left them with her, but they kept scratching at the door to come downstairs. They missed Geisha so much. So, Dona Sebastiana asked Clovis to make a hole. “It’s kind of ugly,” she tells him. Those holes where people and parts of you are supposed to be can feel far too open to your feelings, either getting out or getting in.
That can seem ugly. Because it reminds you of the threat of death that follows you around. Others are living in Dona Sebastiana’s “protection program” too. She turns on the music to lighten things up. Marcelo apologizes for dampening the mood. But he’s strong, he says. Mostly assuring himself. He has a son. He wants to live. And today he just found out he’s under a death threat. He’s not as brave as he wishes he were. It’s hard to be brave when you’re under siege. Not only by real people who are out to get you. But by the flashbacks, ready to attack in The Secret Agent.
Dona Sebastiana toasts to them all. “There are some bad things in life, but there are also good.” Yet, Marcelo/Armando is experiencing the trauma of the bad. The fear of the death threat that comes back in a nightmare of the man who was killed at the gas station. He comes alive as a monster who haunts him. The “monstrous” feelings of loss and memory he’s tried to make dead.
Marcelo/Armando wakes up screaming. With feelings about the cruelty he’s endured.
Followed by the Cruelty of Your Trauma
Yes, Marcelo/Armando endured cruelty at the hands of Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli). And, Ghirotti’s still after him. Ghirotti’s envy. His anger at Dr. Armando Solimões’s demand for respect turns to revenge, and he wants to make a hole. Ghirotti tells his hit men, “He’s a despicable man. I want a hole. In his mouth.” Another hole. There’s already a hole that Armando’s mom and Fátima left. Ghirotti is mostly envious that Armando is smart. “Make him a dummy, you understand?”
You can try to be “dumb” to your trauma, but you aren’t. Marcelo/Armando knows. He knows everything that’s been taken away. Including what Ghirotti did to his research. He met Ghirotti when he came to visit the university where Armando was the department head: “He’s a piece of shit. His son is another piece of shit. Ghirotti dried up public university funding for his own personal benefit, and I was showered with accusations ...” He said to Ghirotti, “I know why you’re doing this. It’s the lithium battery research. It’s a small breakthrough, but it’s my patent.”
Disrespect. Greed. Envy. Ghirotti takes anything he wants for himself. For his business. That was the war between them. That’s why Ghirotti is after him now. Elza/Sara Gerber (Maria Fernanda Cândido) is assigned to help this group of political refugees. She’s taping as she interviews. She says to Armando, “Tell me about Henrique Ghirotti.” He turns off the tape recorder. “I’m not a violent person, but this man. I’d kill him with a hammer. I’d bash his head in with a hammer.”
He's not violent. But Ghirotti is. Eliza tells him, “In this group of refugees, yours is the case I most want to solve.” He says, “These two foreign universities want to take me. They must be pressuring you.” She says, “It’s not that. Those schools do want you, and that’s good. But it’s not that. Two men have been hired to come to Recife to find you. That’s not good,” in The Secret Agent. That’s how Armando knows.
The Grim Reaper won’t let him forget any part of his trauma.
The Grim Reaper Won’t Let You Forget
Maybe you’re actually being chased by assassins? But usually, after trauma, you’re being chased by the memories and feelings you’d like to forget. They are so, so painful, those memories of death and loss. But you can’t really forget, as much as you want to bury them. Like Armando.
Armando’s trauma started long before he lost his wife, Fátima Nascimento (Alice Carvalho). It began when he was born. His mom was taken away from him at birth. No control then. No control now. He lost her earlier than Fernando lost his mom, Fátima. Armando knows that emptiness. He knows what that hole in a life is like. Like the hole in the door through which the cats can escape if they want to. An ugly hole. It’s ugly because of the hunger. The longing. The absence. The hole. It’s a terrible trauma to have a person you need taken away from you just like that. And to have people not care. His wealthy grandparents, his father’s family, thought nothing of their 14-year-old slave. His mom. Cared nothing for her feelings or her rights. Or Armando’s needs.
Just like the wealthy woman being deposed for the death of a 3-year-old, the beloved child of her “slave.” She sent her out for bread because she wanted it, thinking nothing of a little girl who might be scared and run out looking for her mom. Needing her. Getting hit by a bus. And, killed.
Yes, Armando/Marcel knows about arrogance. It robbed him of much more than his patent and university position. It’s another reason he hates Henrique Ghirotti. No different than the woman who only wants to save her skin. She’s self-serving. Thinks of no one else. He knows that pain.
Armando keeps looking for his mom. It’s one reason he’s happy to help out in the place where identity documents are issued and filed. He wants to find her. He wants proof she existed. Then, maybe, some part of that hole inside might be healed. Maybe he could really feel his sadness.
Maybe, if that happens to you, your feelings won’t be secret anymore.
Like in The Secret Agent.
The Healing Power of Remembering
Turns out, Elza’s tapes are a form of remembering. Of preserving memories. Years later, two young women researchers listen to her interviews. She protected the memory of those who were traumatized. Even when they were fighting their own. Like Fernando, after his dad was killed.
Trying to remember is what Armando spent time doing, looking in the files for traces of the mom he never knew. These are the archives of memory. And, they’re there deep inside you, too. Like Armando telling Elza about standing up to Ghirotti’s disrespect. Fátima did too. He tells Mr. Alexandre, who arranged the meeting with Elza at the theater, to “protect what we still have, you and my grandson,” how Fátima yelled at Ghirotti: “My father started working at age nine, and that’s a man.” Mr. Alexandre asks Armando if she really said that. Armando says yes. Mr. Alexandre replies, “All right. All right then.” Touched. It’s the gift of remembering his daughter.
Elza says the passports will be in Armando’s hands in four days. But they’re not. There’s a song playing in the streets, after Armando is killed: “Take care of what’s yours before it goes away.” Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you’re too little. You have no control over things that are sad.
Fernando loses his dad in The Secret Agent. And, he “forgets.” Now, many years later, he is Dr. Fernando Solimões (Wagner Moura). One of the young women, Flavia (Laura Lufési), who listened to the tapes, comes to find him. She “found” Armando, whose story “really got to me, maybe because my grandfather, who was like my father, was from Parnambuco, too.”
The tapes were given to Flavia to translate by Eliza’s daughter, whose real name was Sara Guebert. Fernando doesn’t want to talk about it, but Flavia gives him a flash drive of the tapes: “Your father‘s voice is here, and people talking about him. It’s yours.” He’s wary, but he tells her:
“You know, my grandfather, Alexandre, who brought me up and who I consider my father, he told me that the day my father died, I was showered and ready. I put on my favorite clothes, and I stood there, outside the house, waiting for him. The plan was that he’d come to pick me up. I honestly don’t remember that. Like someone tells you something, and you create a memory. But I don’t know if I remember that day. The truth is, I don’t remember him.” He tells her:
“Do you want to know a coincidence? When I was a child, I really wanted to see that movie, Jaws. My grandfather would not let me. The poster alone scared me, the shark with that huge mouth. (The mouth that can swallow up everyone you love. Leaving you in pieces. With a big hole.) He was a projectionist at the São Luiz cinema. One day, he took me to see it .... Guess where I saw the movie? Right here.” This hospital, where he works, is built on the site of the old cinema.
But, guess what’s even better? It's when you face those memories that scare you. When you can remember the sadness of the day that he didn’t come. Fernando stands quietly, swallowing back his tears. His hand is in his pocket, holding onto the flash drive with his dad’s voice. Remembering.