February Movies Part 1: It Was Just an Accident & The Secret Agent

I am ahead of schedule and have watched the last two Oscar movies on my list. Both were foreign films: one I loved, the other I found to be overhyped and dull. Aren’t you excited to find out which one’s which?!

It Was Just an Accident: Written and directed by Jafar Panahi, this is a brilliant Iranian movie about a man who thinks he has identified his former tormentor from when he was imprisoned by the regime and decides to kidnap and murder him for vengeance. 

Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) runs a garage and spots Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) when he comes in to get his car serviced. Eghbal has a squeaky prosthetic leg, and when Vahid hears that sound, he is immediately triggered, as that was the sound he always heard while he was blindfolded and being tortured for months in an Iranian prison. He follows Eghbal to his house and later to a street where he manages to kidnap him and drive him away to a remote location, where he plans to bury him alive.

I know that everything I have described so far sounds extremely dark and horrific. So let me be the first to say I was shocked by how funny this movie could get. It is the blackest of comedies, and as it progresses, you will find yourself in awe of this deft screenplay that threads such a delicate needle between comedy and despair. I won’t spoil too much, but let’s just say that Vahid starts to experience some doubts about this whole kidnapping and murder scheme and recruits some of his fellow former prisoners to help him sort out what needs to happen next. Which leads to a lot of confusion and anger on their part.

This movie is beautifully acted and quite extraordinary, a wonderful tale of resistance against an oppressive regime that continues to crack down on its people today. The final moments of this film feature a chilling bit of sound design that I would award a special Oscar to all on its own. Of all the foreign films I watched this year, this is the one I admired and loved the most.

The Secret Agent: Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, this is a fictional movie set in 1977 during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Wagner Moura plays Armando, a widower who has been targeted as a dissident. He needs to flee the country with his young son and has enlisted the help of an undercover resistance network to smuggle him out of the country. While he waits for forged documents and an opportunity, he has assumed a new identity and is hiding out with other dissidents, desperately hoping to go unnoticed. Separately, we also follow some history students in the present day, who are researching audio recordings that the resistance network made with people like Armando, trying to piece together his story.

I cannot say I understand the hype around this movie at all. Why is it the favorite to win Best Foreign Film, with an additional nomination for Best Picture? Moura is a good actor, but this movie is a dud, plodding along a nearly three-hour runtime with occasional bouts of action, but mostly long stretches of dull exposition or fantastical sequences that left me cold. The soundtrack is rather wonderful, but other than that, there was nothing particularly captivating about this film. Sometimes it feels like critics just decide they’ve suddenly discovered the cinema of a particular country and need to award it. But comparing this movie to last year’s I’m Still Here, a Brazilian movie set in the same time period, I can’t help but see the stark difference in quality and emotion. 

Feel free to watch this movie and tell me I’m wrong, like all the other critics who love this movie so. But my mind continues to be boggled at why anyone thinks this film is more deserving of awards than the other great foreign films that came out this year.