Walter Salles’ ‘I’m Still Here’ Hauntingly Frames a Brazilian Family’s Survival Through Dictatorial Terror 

Alci Rengifo

History is personal. Whatever moment in time we’re living can’t help but seep into our individual lives. For those who survive direct involvement with the terror of a dictatorship or war, the experience will directly mark every pore of their being. “I’m Still Here” feels that way in every frame. Brazilian director Walter Salles uses one true story to present a powerful ode to those who lived through the U.S.-backed military regime that ruled his home country from 1964 to 1985. For 21 years Brazil was a typical South American front of the Cold War. You could play it safe and stay quiet. Dissent could mean a terrible fate. Salles’ film has a special, personal touch considering he knew its real subjects. In essence, this is a film about history and the way certain events chart the course of lives forever. 

They are the Paiva family, who we meet in 1970 Rio de Janeiro. Under sunny skies they spend a day at the beach with a passing military helicopter hinting at the reality hiding beneath the images of summer fun. Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is married to Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), an engineer. They are a portrait of a South American middle class family. Their children include teen Vera (Valentina Herszage), who channels the youth culture of the times, attending French New Wave films, listening to rock music and developing a love for her Super 8 camera. Reality is more tumultuous. Leftist groups resisting the regime are being targeted and armed factions are taking bolder action, such as the kidnapping of diplomats for ransom. Knowing the times will get edgier, Vera is sent to stay with relatives in Europe. Rubens himself is linked to intellectual dissident circles and soon enough, the secret police come knocking at the door. They assure Eunice her husband will be brought back soon after some questioning. Rubens is never brought back and so Eunice’s real odyssey begins.

Salles’ films embody journeys. His first acclaimed work, 1998’s “Central Station,” was a road drama about a school teacher reluctantly becoming responsible for a marooned boy. In 2004 he directed “The Motorcycle Diaries,” about a young Che Guevara’s life-changing travels through South America. His last film, made a decade ago, was an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic Beat novel “On the Road.” In “I’m Still Here,” Salles remains restless with the reflective power of memory. This is a compelling film that first immerses in the details of its world. Before the shattering event that alters the Paiva family, Salles wants us to know what a living room felt like in 1970 Rio de Janeiro, what music was playing on the radio and how adults smoked or drank together, while the kids played or went out to a movie. We take moments to linger on how marvelous Eunice’s cooking is. Cinematographer Adrian Teijido does not shoot in the drained style of many political thrillers but instead using light and color like a time capsule. This is a gorgeous place with a silent darkness beyond the well-kept lawn. 

Terror creeps in and Eunice becomes the anchor, played by Fernanda Torres (daughter of legendary Brazilian actor Fernanda Montenegro) in a performance of overwhelming strength and fragility. She has already won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and certainly deserves Oscar consideration. This is not a role about heroism but human endurance, when there is no choice but to carry on. In a blink Eunice must keep her children calm while figuring out what to do about their home, how to find her husband. She is herself arrested by the regime’s thugs, who take her into those notoriously shadowy halls where the sounds of torture fill the air. Like Costa-Gavras’ “Missing,” about Charles Horman’s disappearance during the Chile coup, Salles doesn’t need to get sensationalist to demonstrate the way terror is imposed through vanishing a loved one. Not knowing becomes as torturous as having a clear answer. The men who invade the Paiva home to take Rubens away lounge around like friendly visitors, using soft manners and even cracking jokes. It is fascism sure of its authority, being threatening by seeming so ordinary.

If only real life were built to the reassuring twists of some works of fiction. Salles’ urgent need to share this story about a family whose home he would visit as an adolescent does not become a chase thriller, or a movie where the villains get their dues. Eunice’s choices are reduced to returning to college in order to sustain her family’s well-being, and eventually leaving Rio de Janeiro. Recognition of what happened will become her family’s real quest, even as the years pass. By 1996, Eunice is frailer and her grown children still support the quest to have the Brazilian government recognize the disappearance of Rubens. Such is the only justice victims of fascism at times receive, especially when their country was a part of the wider conflict between ideologies. If Salles’ other films have been about travels, “I’m Still Here” becomes about the sudden disruption of life by exterior forces. A single attack, moment or tragedy can uproot the whole flow of a family. Even as Paiva children grow, having families or build careers, they will never forget 1970 and how that year marked the true beginning of their lives. Moments look like old photographs or snapshots, struggling to contain every detail before fading out.

“I’m Still Here” in its broader sense resonates as a warning about the past, present and future. Every frame has the power of a time remembered, yet families are living through this right now in Egypt, Palestine, Russia and many other corners. Salles’ generation was recently shaken by how the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro very nearly dragged Brazil back into the nightmares of its recent past. Though Salles doesn’t dwell on it, the coup that momentarily ended Brazil’s democracy was planned in Washington. The Paiva family became true victims of history, as all of us are in one way or another. Fernanda Torres says it all with her look of determination and hidden despair. These events happened in our continent and we should ask, how immune are we from soon having a government where the midnight knock can happen?

“I’m Still Here” releases Jan. 17 in select theaters.