'I'm Still Here': Smile, though your country is breaking
Beautiful, devastating Brazilian drama looks at life under oppression
In the opening shot of “I’m Still Here,” Eunice Paiva is paddling happily in the warm waters off the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. The idyll is punctured by the roar of a military helicopter buzzing overhead.
Can she ignore it and go on swimming? Does the reminder of the growing political repression in Brazil cloud her mood? Or is there some middle ground, a way to see clearly the injustice and horror of life in a repressive regime without letting it rob you of your joy?
It’s that agonizing balance that Walter Salles’ Oscar-nominated film, which is more family drama than political thriller, rests on. Based on the true story of Eunice (Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres) and her family, “I’m Still Here” is a beautiful and devastating film about the vital importance of remembering everything, for a family and for a country.
The movie opens in 1970, and the Paiva household is a happy one. Eunice and her husband Ruben (Selton Mello) preside over a happily chaotic household of five kids. Their days are filled with trips to the beach, soccer in the streets, laughter at the dinner table. The sequences are shot in warm colors, often as if we were watching 8mm home movies.
But there is a darkening outside. Brazil is six years into a military dictatorship and growing more and more unstable. When left-wing counterrevolutionaries kidnap the Swiss ambassador, the Palvas’ two older daughters are detained and threatened at a military roadblock. The couple considers sending the oldest one away to school in London for her safety, and the conversations are tinged with the fearful uncertainty that will be familiar to those paying attention to U.S. politics in 2025. How bad is it? Will it get worse? What should we do?
Then, one day, there’s a knock at the door. The secret police arrive, not with shouts and threats, but politely, asking if Ruben can come in to give a deposition. Putting on a brave face for the children, Ruben agrees, and Eunice even makes dinner for the policemen left to watch them. The sequence is all the more harrowing because of the veneer of normalcy, the sense that somehow, if everyone just stays calm and does what they’re told, everything will be okay.
(Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)
And then Eunice and one of her daughters are brought in for questioning, and “I’m Still Here” swiftly descends from that warm domestic life into a cold nightmare. The confusion and terror of the interrogation sequences are chilling, as the interlocutors use doubt and gaslighting as much as threats and physical violence to cow their prisoners.
Eunice and her daughter are released, but Ruben isn’t, and government officials insist they don’t have him in custody. This is the ultimate act of psychological torture against the Paiva family, to blow a hole in the heart of the family and pretend it isn’t there.
Eunice decides to lie to her kids and tell them Ruben is traveling, and at first it seems like she’s just putting a brave face on things. But in Torres’ marvelously subtle performance, we see there’s something deeper in her denial. As she doggedly pursues answers as to her husband’s fate with the government, she tries to shield her children as much as possible from the terror of not knowing.
When a news photographer comes to take pictures of the family, Eunice insists that everyone smile broadly for the camera. It’s an act of defiance, not delusion. They may take their husband and father, but she’ll be damned if she lets them take their joy.
While most of “I’m Still Here” takes place in the early ‘70s, the end of the film unspools across the decades, as we see the children grow up and have children of their own. Eunice becomes a lawyer and anti-junta activist fighting for the truth (she doesn’t receive confirmation of Ruben’s fate until 2014.)
A reporter asks her if it matters to find out what happened so many years ago, or if people should focus their attention on the problems of today. (Whenever someone says “we need to move forward,” don’t trust them.) Eunice’s answer, and her life, is a testament to the importance of not letting anything, the good or the bad, be forgotten.
“I’m Still Here” is now in theaters. In Madison, it’s playing at AMC Fitchburg 18 and Marcus Point.