TIFF '24: "I'm Still Here" is a staggering piece of political cinema
Thursday, September 12, 2024 at 9:55PM by Cláudio Alves
An absence is a scar. You might not see it like you would scarred flesh, but deep down, you feel it. Memories are both a salve and a burning touch that keeps the tissue raised, red and angry. Memories are all that's left in the absence, so they define it as much as they soothe the pain. People are covered in such scars, littered all over their spirit. Places have them, too, like the ghosts of paintings and photographs taken down from the wall, leaving faded patches within a home that is no more. Countries bear them, their history a story of scars. We can learn from them. We have to, for the alternative is forgetting and forgetting is the death of history, of justice. If a country forgets, new scars will come to pass, torn with impunity in a vicious cycle without end. So, treasure the memory and learn to acknowledge the pain of absence. For absence is a scar, and we are our scars.
In his latest film, I'm Still Here, Brazillian director Walter Salles weaves these notions into every frame, articulating a passionate plea. His is a cinema that fights for the national memory and cries, bloody and furious, against forgetting…
Between January 20th and 22nd, 1971, Rubens Beirodt Paiva was taken from his home, incarcerated, tortured, and killed by the military forces in Rio de Janeiro. He had once been a congressman for the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB) before the 1964 coup imposed a new dictatorship on the nation. Though retired from politics to work as an engineer, Paiva still did what he could for leftist causes and the underground fight against the regime. This was the basis for his violent persecution. In his forced absence, Eunice Facciolla Paiva and the couple's five children survived through the twilight of the military state and the rebirth of Brazilian democracy. Forty years after his disappearance, through the intervention witnesses and whistleblowers, he was officially declared dead.
I'm Still Here dramatizes this story, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva's homonymous family memoir. It doesn't come into Rubens' perspective, however. Instead, it centers Eunice and her brood, right from minute one, when the sun still shines on their smiling faces and hope hasn't given in to despair. They're at the beach, as they often are, basking in the carioca sun – the children playing on the sand while their mother floats in the limbo-like cradle of the ocean. Her ears submerged, sound muffled by the gentle wave, Eunice seems to exist in a suspended peace. This is, of course, the calm before the storm. Not that the audience is kept unaware of the threatening forces circling around the Paiva clan like sharks in bloody water.
Even something as idyllic as a home movie interlude is disrupted by the military presence and the indignities of a life under authoritarian governments. Darkness creeps in, insidious, corrosive, mostly ignored by the kids but ever-so-felt in the parents' conspiratorial glances and cautious stance. Eunice, in particular, seems as if she's always been preparing herself for the day it'll all come down on them. It manifests in the tension in Fernanda Torres' shoulders and the guardedness of her gaze, a couple of sharp notes in a rhapsodic characterization that, like all the family dynamics in I'm Still Here, feels lived-in, grounded in the reality of lives that span far beyond the limited narrative frame.
Disaster strikes after Salles has lulled his audience into the rhythms of the Paivas, a false sense of security within their metropolitan pastoral. The shock is hard to repress, made more visceral because of how Torres and Selton Mello play the couple's desperate attempts at guarding their children against the realities of what's happening, the trauma, and the terror. Knowing warmth turns to ash in her eyes, while his casualness reveals a heartbreaking sense of farewell, the understanding that Rubens is well aware he'll never see any of his loved ones again. Theirs is the struggle to keep silent when, inside, you're screaming. It only gets worse when Eunice and one of the daughters are taken in for questioning.
For the first time, Torres' unrelenting control over Eunice's vocal cadences slips, allowing a ragged sort of rage to seep through, a sorrow that's enough to bring a viewer to its knees. Much of these prison-bound passages rest entirely on the leading lady's shoulders, as one's sense of time muddles into nothingness and the soundscape echoes the whimpers, the screams and hopeful songs of all the political prisoners locked behind bars. Yet, the most insightful moment in Torres' performance might be Eunice's return to the relative comforts of home. Rather than waking up her children, she lets them slumber and goes to shower away the grime, alone with her thoughts. It's a gesture other filmmakers might have lost between scenes, but Salles and Torres make it a precious insight into how this woman works, how she perseveres.
I will be frank with you, dear reader: Fernanda Torres delivers one of the definitive performances of this cinematic year, the kind of monument of acting that deserves the construction of monuments in its honor. Witnessing Eunice's love, her incandescent fury and steel backbone is to watch a master artist at the height of their powers, somehow never capitulating to expected choices or the easy way out of challenging scenes. Even her recovery, her aging and thriving into a new phase of Brazil's history, is a spectacle worth applauding, full of beautiful details that can be as subtle as a loser way of holding her arms at rest or the gradations of smiles across decades. These grace notes add to a human symphony that will leave you at the point of crying until there are no tears left to cry. At least, that's where it left me.
Then again, I'm Still Here is full of such graceful touches, extending past Torres' towering tour de force. My mind wanders to those faded patches of wall as Eunice and the children leave the Rio de Janeiro house they once called home. Or the many intrusions into the kids' perspectives, how they cope with what's happening to them and their country. A daughter donning her father's shirt in search of his hug while smoking her mother's cigarettes is one such surge of filial heartbreak. Salles' approach is fairly conventional, but he knows how to work classicism in his favor, finding a way to materialize memory in the form of cinema for his nation and the whole world to bear witness. Nobody shall forget while works like I'm Still Here shout their truth through the screen. Fascism shan't rise again!
At the very end of his historical epic, Salles will even find a way to shout like Eunice so often did when her house was beset by her husband's murderers. He does it in silence, contrasting two images. There's Fernanda Montenegro taking on the role of Eunice from her daughter for a 2014 final act. And then there's the TV, where Rubens' face appears as a part of a story on Brazil's bloody past. Two faces confront us. One aged, dazed eyes sparking with sudden, overwhelming recognition. And the other remains forever young, never afforded the time to grow old. Together, they are the face of Brazil, the scar and the history, the imperative of remembering and never forgetting. They are the greatest miracle in I'm Still Here, one of the year's most essential films as far as I'm concerned.
Reader Comments (3)
I've heard great things about this. I'd like to see this as I do wonder about why parts of the world have fallen apart as I kind of believe that us Americans should take the blame for the shit we've created and set a bad example for every other country. As a dumb American to the entire world, I'm very sorry for living in a stupid country.
I currently have Torres in my final 5 for Actress. Claudio, does Montenegro have enough material to land in Supporting Actress? I could see the mother/daughter narrative happening.
Michael R -- Montenegro only shows up for the epilogue and has zero lines. She makes an immense impact but I doubt the Academy will be swayed by such a limited quasi-cameo.