Walter Salles’ tenth feature, based on a horrendous true story, is a momentous tale of the necessity and burden of memory
Salles, one of Brazil’s finest filmmakers, has always been a deeply political presence. Born in 1956 to Walter Moreira Salles, the most influential Brazilian banker of the 20th century and former Secretary of Treasury to João Goulart, the country’s last left-wing president who was exiled after US-back coup d’etat in 1964, Salles Jr. is old enough to remember the entire crimson history of the (neo)liberalization of Latin America. The atrocious period between (more or less) the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s, which swept most of the continent, left more than a million dead, and the majority of the living bearing catastrophic consequences to date. This is seldom mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon media as anything other than Milton Friedman’s “great success”, or the “victory over Communism” (that never even was).
There’s a good reason for that: the neoliberally corporatist establishment doesn’t want people to contemplate the long-term effects of wholesale privatization and monopolization of every single good or service they pay for. They also don’t want the plebs to establish causation between the maneuvers of centers of power and our own dwindling standard of living and the anxiety of precariousness. For reasons beyond the scope of this review, in “traditionally democratic” societies where the second half of the 20th century unfolded with minimal military violence, the Chicago School’s economic ravaging mostly manages to slip through the cracks and blend with the everyday tedium of the masses. Not so much in Brazil, where thousands of families never recovered from the disappearances of their loved ones throughout the ’70s and beyond.
Walter Salles’ excellent 10th feature, I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), based on the book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of the “disappeared” former congressman and left-wing activist Rubens Paiva, is a heartfelt and bold drama fiercely taking on the enormous scope of consequences of being the opposition in Brazil during the military dictatorship. Rubens (a tender Selton Mello), the intellectual, life-of-the-party husband of Eunice (a heartbreaking turn from Fernanda Torres) and a father of five, is suddenly taken from his family home on a sunny day in 1971 by unidentified men in monochromatic civilian clothes. Eunice and their 15-year-old daughter Eliana (Luiza Kozovski) are also dragged into custody to “answer questions” they know nothing about, an episode that will profoundly change the family forever.
Masterfully layered and confidently executed, I’m Still Here swivels between intimate family drama and sweeping political thriller, parsing countess societal horrors to land as an homage to the fearlessness of women – especially those who, robbed of everything, still had families to raise. The greatest of its many strengths is its focus on Eunice as the unwitting but unyielding pillar of the community, a woman with no real choice but to push on. In I’m Still Here‘s quietest, most fleeting moments, a quick closeup of Torres’ terrified eyes or a sudden glance toward the streets convey the enormity of the story.
Bringing memories vividly to life in saturated 35 mm shots by cinematographer Adrian Teijido and meticulous, organic scenographies of cluttered, lived-in homes, this is a technically and emotionally accomplished film that can be approached from many angles, each of them devastating and satisfying in equal measure.
Most ambitious films with their sights on blanket social commentary bite off more than their modest runtime can digest, but I’m Still Here surprises with both elegance and efficiency with which it portrays and examines the nature of loss, perseverance, and the instinct for self-preservation. The main reason for this, despite the film spanning 45 years and myriad biographies, is Walter Salles’ deeply personal investment in all that’s shown on screen. As a friend of the Paiva family, Salles spent most of his formative years in their home, crediting its social circle for his own cultural and political inclinations.
Much of the warmth and camaraderie emanating from the numerous scenes of familial gatherings is therefore explained. Beyond mere sentimentality, Salles is here uniquely equipped to understand that, just as there is no personal without the political, there is no political without the personal. You can almost see him as a boy, a cousin in one of many photos of families and friends that come up across decades to bookend Eunice’s memories. This genuine, naturalistic sense of unity and everlasting hope within remembrance is a useful disposition to have, otherwise, stories of loss threaten a too-easy slide into pessimism.
Narratively, Walter Salles doesn’t shy away from universalizing the Paivas’ experience by showing that calamity (of which political cruelty is just one instance) can befall anyone, and just when you least expect it. I’m Still Here opens with a 1970 Christmas Day family fiesta in Rio de Janeiro, where Marcelo (a sweet Guilherme Silveira), the Paivas’ youngest, finds a stray dog on the beach, then swindles the soft-hearted Rubens into accepting a new family member (Pimpao, they would call him). Meanwhile, the eldest daughter Vera (a fierce Valentina Herszage) captures her family’s memories on a handheld Super 8 camera. She is preparing for an imminent sendoff to London (no beach, she bemoans) for studies, and things couldn’t be better for this affluent, sociable, upper-middle-class family of seven (now eight with Pimpao).
The joyous sounds of bossa nova and sambas are muted suddenly when Vera’s friend’s car is pulled over by a militia looking for “terrorists”. The teenagers, who until then were laughing and messing around, are pinned against a wall inside a tunnel, harassed, and searched. Though Vera comes home in one piece, the sense of unease is planted, and we rely on Eunice’s ever-watchful eyes (and ears) to materialize and detail the violence for us. First, there are phone calls Rubens takes on the sly, then the letters he hands over to an unknown visitor without explaining himself to Eunice, then tanks in the street catch the corner of Eunice’s eye from a distance during yet another pleasant day with her loved ones. Warren Ellis’ evocative soundtrack creeps in and eventually overtakes as a harbinger of catastrophe.
The news of crackdowns spreads, and as many of their highbrow family friends worry, it becomes clear to viewers that something is going on. This much is clear to Eunice as well, despite Rubens not sharing the details of his anti-establishment operations with her. I commend Walter Salles for carefully treading the line between Rubens’ great love for his family and the need to protect them should the whip crack, and an awareness of how this sort of secrecy constitutes a betrayal of Eunice, who, as a woman in the 1970s anywhere in the world, would become unspeakably burdened should something happen to him. The whip, of course, cracks in the first act when three unknown men stroll into the Paivas’ house, their safe space of love and support, and quietly instruct Rubens to come with them and “give a deposition”. There is a brief, tender moment between him and Eliana, to whom Rubens gives one of his shirts as he casually puts another on. The way he looks at her, we know he is saying goodbye.
What we are left with is a bewildered Eunice, who is trying to calm her four children and housekeeper Zeze (a stoic Pri Helena), while attempting to liaise with the unknown, armed intruders. Soon enough, she and Eliana are taken captive as well, made to put hoods over their heads, their fate’s unknown. After 12 days of interrogation hell, both bureaucratic and hands-on, Eunice is released and given a new lease on life of sorts, one in which she has no clue what happened to her husband, how she will sustain half a dozen hungry mouths, and no opportunity to relent against the dictators or even ask for closure.
Much less than this would suffice to break people, but Maria Lucrécia Eunice Facciolla Paiva, as she would defiantly spit her name in her interrogators’ faces, pushes the sky away and, in many ways, emerges victorious over her torturers. Torres, who worked with Salles on Foreign Land (1995), is monumental here, a restrained, ever-dignified but absolutely scorching presence, setting every frame ablaze with her unrelenting desire to endure and remember. Not faltering for a second in front of her kids, not even in a stomach-churning moment when she urgently consoles a hooded Eliana in a torture facility corridor from underneath a hood herself, Eunice is a proxy for the true center of the society, the working women and mothers who sacrifice everything for their communities and families. This is a center that holds against any adversary.
As she navigates one obstacle after another, Eunice never loses sight of what’s dearest to her, especially Rubens. His body may have disappeared, but she ensures that his memory and, therefore, his fight and history live on. She earns a law degree, becomes an environmental activist fighting land seizure, and keeps talking about her husband with a broad smile. “They want us to be sad. Smile. Smile!” she says to her children in one of the early photos without Rubens, a motto she upholds throughout unimaginable grief and hardship. Years on, the memory of her husband, including his sordid fate, will inform much of her life, but it’s the acceptance of this pain that leads to its transformation and to a rebuilding of history.
I’m Still Here begins and ends with familial celebrations, nearly 45 years apart, which feels only appropriate, given its overarching message. Much as they have been through, the Paivas stay together and support one another through all their battles, raising new generations of good people. It is precisely this cohesion, the solidarity and love they all show their relatives and friends, many of whom were activists for the opposition, that the establishment wanted to dismantle. By persevering while remembering their loved ones and their battles, the Paivas, and now Walter Salles, show how the enemy is really upended. History belongs to those who fight the hardest for its narratives and who pass them on most effectively.
Even at 85 and addled by dementia, Eunice (played in the last scene by Torres’ mother, Fernanda Montenegro, another long-term collaborator of Salles’) still smiles when she sees an image of her husband on TV before the kids roll her out for another smiling family portrait. The pain remains, but so does the hope. I’m Still Here is a rare film unafraid to admit that hope wouldn’t exist without pain.