‘I’m Still Here’: When they come for you

Award-winning Brazillian filmmaker Walter Salles does what all great filmmakers do when tackling heavy subject matter; he drills down to focus on one family amid tumult, providing the viewer a ringside seat into life under a Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship without trying to tackle every facet of the history behind a regime which lasted from 1964 to 1985. Born in 1958, Salles lived outside of Brazil until his family returned when he was 15, around 1973. His experience living under the Médici dictatorship no doubt shaped his desire to tell a story about the period. Several of Salles’ previous films, “Central Station,” “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and “City of God” (which Salles served as producer) all circle social and economic conditions in Latin America. With his latest, “I’m Still Here,” Salles delivers one of his best and most important films.

I’ve watched many films like “I’m Still Here” in my life, and every time, I find myself thinking during the viewing how fortunate I am that I did not live through those times in those places. Often, I followed those thoughts with, “At least I live in a country where that cannot happen.” As I sat at the Nugget Theater in Hanover, NH, on a Saturday afternoon watching “I’m Still Here,” new thoughts invaded my brain space. While the circumstances and conditions of this story, set in late 1970/early 1971, with a couple of time jumps in the third act, are much different than what is currently taking place in the United States, some of the similarities provide an eerie feeling of, “Well, it probably won’t happen here, but I can no longer say it can’t.” Thus, “I’m Still Here” provides relevance in its story of the past—a warning—that if we’re not careful, democracy can slip through our fingers instantly.

The story drops us six years into the Brazilian dictatorship, a right-wing military Junta that was backed and aided by the US government during the height of the Cold War and fears of growing communist spread in Latin America. This film is based on a memoir by Marcelo Reubens Paiva about the forced disappearance of his father, Rubens Paiva, in January 1971. When we meet the Paiva family, it’s December of 1970. Rubens is a happy family man with a loving wife, Maria, four daughters, and a son. Rubens, a civil engineer by trade, is in the early stages of planning the family’s new home in Rio. The Paiva’s appear to be upper-class, as they live in walking distance to the beaches of Rio, and have a live-in housekeeper.

While the events of an escalating military presence appear as a backdrop during this first act, the audience understands that the situation is growing more precarious as the government seeks to crack down on armed resistance, using the kidnapping of an ambassador by leftist guerrillas as an opportunity to use a policy of torture and fear to quell further dissent. We don’t see any direct evidence of Rubens’ involvement with any resistance movement, although there are some clues that he may be sympathetic to the opposition.

The Paiva’s send their oldest daughter to live in England with refugee friends who fear reprisals coming from the government. All of this unfolds against moments of normalcy, happiness, and family celebration. One of the masterful strokes in Salles’ film is that people still need to live when dealing with life under a dictatorship. Oppression doesn’t mean the death of the happiness; it is that essence of life and joy the Paiva family will soon need to exist when the worst comes knocking on their front door.

Armed men, clad in leather jackets and with serious looks, show up at the Paiva’s residence and demand Rubens come with them to answer questions. It is during this home invasion we learn that Rubens was a former congressman representing the labor party of Brazil’s former government before it was absolved during the military coup. After a brief exile from Brazil, Rubens returned, seemingly giving up all political actions, so it is a shock to both Rubens and his family that he should be taken away for questioning.

With Rubens gone and armed men still keeping an eye over the household, the film shifts firmly in focus to Rubens’s wife, Maria, in a tour-de-force performance by Fernanda Torres, who must try to make sense of unnerving events while not upsetting her keepers, and not scaring her children. We feel the fear contained inside Maria through Torres’ brilliant acting. And then, in another horrifying revelation, after 24 hours with no returned husband, both Torres and her oldest remaining daughter in the house are forced to leave the home for questioning too.

Salles’ decisions as director are to keep the audience in the dark about what is happening as much as its protagonists are. We learn the facts of Rubens’ disappearance when his wife Maria does. After nearly two weeks under arrest in a military-style prison, Maria is released (her daughter was let go after one day), but what happened to Maria’s husband, Rubens, is the crux of the film’s second act.

We feel Maria’s growing dread that her husband will never return, and getting the government to admit what happened, or even trying to get proof that the government even took him for questioning, proves a challenge. All the while, Maria must find a way to keep her family going, which is no small feat in a country where, in 1970, the wife needed her husband’s signature to withdraw money from a bank account.

Yes, “I’m Still Here” is at times bleak. There will be no happy ending for the Paiva family regarding their patriarch, Rubens. The true story of Rubens Paiva was that he was tortured and murdered a day after his arrest. His body was never found. And while the film is about this travesty and Maria’s quest to learn the truth, it is also a story of resilience and life affirmation. Maria refuses to let this atrocity destroy her family. In two bookends to the film, we see how the Paiva family succeeded beyond the events of Rubens’ disappearance and murder.

Throughout its nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Salles recreates a 1970s Brazil that feels so immediate and real that one marvels at the production team who pulled it off. The movie, shot on 35mm, looks authentic to the period. Despite the grim subject, Salles finds magical moments that stay with the audience, reminding us that there can be joy and happiness in the past marred by tragedy. By all accounts, Rubens Paiva was a wonderful dad and husband. “I’m Still Here” honors his memory, warning that authoritarian regimes may seek to destroy those who disagree, but it cannot destroy their spirit, or what they stand for, if we refuse to let them.

James Kent is the publisher’s assistant/ arts editor at the Mountain Times and the co-host of stuffweveseen.com.