I'm Still Here

The Brazilian drama about the corrosive effects of despotism made a strong awards showing with three Oscar nominations, including Best Actress and Best Picture.

I didn’t catch “I’m Still Here” until after I’d already published my annual Top 10 List, and it’s too bad because it certainly would have been a contender. A biographical historical drama about one family’s experiences in the Brazilian military dictatorship during the early 1970s, it’s a searing and splendid look at the corrosive effect of despotism.

I won’t go into any comparisons with our current political climate, as I don’t find that sort of film criticism very interesting outside of the reviewer feeling compelled to broadcast their own biases. But I’m sure some will.

The junta was one of those ugly periods in Central and South American history that the U.S. tends to downplay, owing to our sordid involvement in supporting the 1964 military coup. As the story opens in 1970, the revived dictatorship is rolling out massive roundups of its political enemies.

Against this backdrop is the Paiva family, living a seemingly idyllic life in a beautiful seaside house at Leblon beach, a ritzy portion of Rio de Janeiro. The father, Rubens (Selton Mello), is a lawyer and former member of the legislature opposing the military. His wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), runs the household with a mix of love and tolerance, their five children enjoying daily swims in the ocean and the privileges of upper-class life.

Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries”), director from a screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, stresses the sun-dappled beauty of this existence, the children’s smiles flashing and the kitchen full of wonderful colors of all kinds of food. It only makes the slide into chaos and depravity even more of a contrast.

Rubens, it seems, is working in coordination with the opposition, though not the portion that’s carrying out violent terrorism acts like kidnapping the Swiss ambassador. Eunice has an idea of what’s going on, based on who their friends are and visitors dropping by, but her husband takes pains not to directly involve her — and the children are wholly innocent.

Eventually the state police show up on their doorstep to take him in for “questioning.” The scene where he Rubens silently says goodbye to Eunice as they put him into his own car is fleeting, but poignant. It is the last she will ever see him.

Eunice tries to go through the proper channels to get some word of him, which eventually results in being arrested herself — along with her oldest daughter, teenage Eliana (Luiza Kosovski). They clearly have no value as witnesses, but are taken in simply as a show of power and intimidation.

Eunice is kept for a number of days, her tidy housewife’s dress slowly decaying as she is kept in a dank cell with no way to properly wash or sleep. She does not even know what is happening to Eliana, as the police show her books full of suspect photographs, which seem to only grow larger each day. In one of them, her own face peers out at her.

Eventually Eunice is released. The days go on, there is no word of Rubens, and she comes to accept what has happened to him. But she refuses to be silent, demanding at least that the government admit they have killed him, and grant her his body for a proper burial.

What’s interesting about “I’m Still Here” as a piece of storytelling is that Eunice is not really the main character at the beginning, but gradually becomes the central focus as the movie goes on. Torres is just marvelous, in one of those performances that’s not full of big outbursts and long speeches, but is built upon the quiet moments and the growing desperation etching her face.

It picked up three Oscar nominations, and not just the expected one for international feature but also Torres for Best Actress and even leaped onto the Best Picture list. All well deserved.

The film is based on the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Eunice and Rubens’ son. Rather than taking the expected tack of making his father the center of the story, the famous martyr, it instead focuses on the less showy but in some ways more memorable strength of his mother.

Eunice continues to console her children, insisting their father will be returned to them soon, when she already knows the truth early on. Even when they have to sell their car and house because they no longer have his income, she persists and perseveres.

There are all kinds of courage, though the movies usually feature the big, bold aka ‘masculine’ sort: making speeches, shooting guns, standing up. “I’m Still Here” gives grace to the feminine approach, which is no less worthy because it relies on patience rather than power.