Just like there is downvoting – you embrace one candidate and vote for another – times woke up They force us to say that we like a film when in fact we find it rather average. This is the case of “The Secret Agent”, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose story is spare, but applauded by critics for being full of quotes. This situation is reminiscent of Paulo Francis’ commentary on Gláuber Rocha’s “Terra em trance,” when critics were largely favorable to the work:
— The film sucks, but the director is a genius.
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Cases of banning debate use different costumes, usually appearing disguised under the discourse of justice or historical correctness. A few days ago, the Cameroonian curator of the São Paulo Biennale vetoed the presence of Belgian artist Marie-Esméralda in a debate. She was dismissed on the grounds that she was the great-grandniece of King Leopold II, a known genocide. Ancestral responsibility has become a criterion of conservation – as if genetics determined political position, or as if descendants must answer for the crimes of their ancestors who died a century ago.
Both cases illustrate the same trend: art is no longer judged according to aesthetic criteria and becomes a battlefield for identity. The episodes are part of the use of taste for politics. Under cover, the cultural product is transformed into an ideological act – and the person who enjoys it is put in the role of puppet.
The spectator watches the film, eats his popcorn and leaves the cinema more or less satisfied. Back home, he consults the Internet and comes across a well-orchestrated online campaign: it’s a work of genius! The guy swallows hard, embarrassed by his intellectual smallness. Sit a mouse. How have you not noticed the supreme kiss of art? Hence the vote woke upis a step.
Behind the defense, there is a cause. Shortcomings are tolerated in the name of political cronyism. This was common in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the Communist Party closed ranks to defend its members. The first phase of Jorge Amado, with the hagiography of Luís Carlos Prestes, “The Knight of Hope”, was outraged. But it is schematic in its socialist realism. Same with Cândido Portinari and his popular characters, idealized as superheroes.
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This position was part of the use of art as a political tool of persuasion. We then speak of the Stalinist period: discourse replaces artistic intuition and becomes a regulated manifestation.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 buried the vision of socialist realism. He should have been buried earlier, in 1956, the year Khrushchev revealed Stalin’s crimes. But everything takes time; Even the truth sometimes takes decades to become reality. (This expression does not apply to Prestes and Oscar Niemeyer, who never believed in Khrushchev.) The activism of works of art against art itself has awakened. Just as Stalinism and its socialist realism only valued militant aspects, current critical thinking is oriented towards the defense of theses rather than aesthetic and artistic aspects.
The Godard of “La Femme Chinois”, in his Maoist phase, has nothing to do with the poetic and nihilistic anarchism of “Acossado”. It’s simple: activist work is inferior, but the political cause turns a blind eye to the flaws of a Manichean film.
Nominated as Brazil’s representative for the Oscar, “The Secret Agent” is sold as a beachfront cover. When its flaws are pointed out, particularly by the public, the critical battalion takes its defense. Strangely, the film’s merit – exposing the violence of daily Brazilian life – is always diminished. The work shows a country that is inhumane, devoid of empathy, barbaric in its selfish nature. Unfortunately, the story wants to be cultivated and is ultimately content with cinematic references when it could dig deeper into the wound.
The Southern Businessman’s Story is a finished portrait of art in the form of a thesis. It’s superficial, discursive. There’s a touch of wokeness when arguing with the protagonist’s wife. It is in the scenario that we must bring the conflict, the drama. But it harbors a kind of falsely regionalist resentment. The open story threads demonstrate a fear of calling out what has been raised by the plot, watering down what is cruel – a society insensitive to the value of life. Wagner Moura, the Marcelo of history, is the one who gives color and nuance. His despair at the inexplicable nature of his situation, with an economy of gestures, just in his eyes, is a relief of intelligence.
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