Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here tells the story of the disappearance of Rubens Paiva by telling the story of his family dealing with the loss.
Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) is an ex-congressman turned civil engineer living a blissful existence with his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) in Rio de Janeiro during the Brazilian military dictatorship. When the secret police come knocking, the Paivas are whisked off for questioning, from which Rubens does not return – with no explanation from the government.
I’m Still Here is a spellbinding movie, which is not a hoary superlative but a description of the experience of watching it. Its spell is to wrap you up so completely in its world and characters that you cannot critically assess anything else about it. At that, it is phenomenally good. The opening scenes of family life are so rapturously beautiful and sweet that when the horrors start you feel the pain tangibly. Fernanda Torres delivers a performance that should top any lists for the year, with her grief and fear carefully stifled to protect her children.
There are elements of the film that are less satisfying. It is a long film and certainly feels it. It also doesn’t explain the political situation in Brazil very clearly. From watching this you certainly wouldn’t think the dictatorship was popular at the time, but it really was. We are shown the government is tyrannical, but there are also signs that the opposition aren’t exactly angels either. We are shown that leftist militants have kidnapped a Swiss ambassador, but this is background noise rather than a clear motivation for the state’s reprisals. Some reading is required for novices to the history of the region and to the Paiva case, and so however accurate the film is in its depiction of events, it’s hard not to wonder what exactly you’re not being told. No, there is no excuse for torture or murder, but when a side is reduced to pure villainy it lends a whiff of propaganda to proceedings and even well-merited propaganda can generate cynical distrust.
On a purely human level the film is unimpeachable. How do you move on when you have no knowledge of what happened to your partner? How long can you wait before you make practical adjustments to your life to deal with their absence? How do you grieve when you need to maintain hope? I’m Still Here asks these questions by making you fall in love with a family and experiencing their loss.
