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Political refugees have a moment to let their guard down in this warm ensemble scene from “The Secret Agent,” the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s contemplative period drama, which is nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture.
The movie takes place in 1977 in the midst of Brazil’s military dictatorship, and this scene involves a group gathering at the home of Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria). She is a house mother for the refugees staying in her building.
Narrating the scene, Mendonça Filho said that it “works because of the great acting, and also because of quite a lot of affection that comes through in the text.”
He said they only had one evening to shoot the sequence and they shot it overnight, juggling “two cameras, anamorphic Panavision lenses, three mics, about 30 crew, three dogs, a cat: We had a lot to get done.”
Even with all that’s going on in the scene, it has a formal, calm look to it. “I never really wanted to do this sequence hand-held,” Mendonça Filho said. “I always thought that it should be exactly the way it looks, very precise, shots well-composed. I really wanted the actors and the characters to live within the frame without any extra energy coming from the camera itself.”
Read the “Secret Agent” review.
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Mekado Murphy writes about the world of movies and produces the Anatomy of a Scene video series.
The post Watch an Ensemble Scene From ‘The Secret Agent’ appeared first on New York Times.
