I'M STILL HERE (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

I'm Still Here, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2024

Life seems a dream for the Paiva family, living in Rio de Janeiro in a fine house only a few minutes' walk from the beach. The wife and husband seem happy, and their five children laugh and play and spend time with friends. It is 1970, however, and Brazil is under the leadership of a military dictatorship, following a coup d'etat six years priors prior. All of that is in the backdrop of the early story of I'm Still Here, as, occasionally, helicopters fly overhead, army transport trucks line the major thoroughfare by the house, and news reports of hunts for and arrests of suspected "subversives" and "terrorists" fill the airwaves.

The Paivas seem removed from what's happening around them. It creeps ever closer, though, as the story unfolds, and by the time the overreach of the autocratic government arrives at the family's door, it is too late for them to do anything. The system is so intentionally convoluted and secretive that there really isn't anything they could do.

Director Walter Salles' film is based on a specific true story—that of the Paiva family and especially of its matriarch Eunice (Fernanda Torres), who has no idea the position into which she will be forced in a relatively short time at the story's start. After all, her husband Rubens (Selton Mello) is a former federal congressman—ousted, like others who opposed military rule, from that governmental body when the junta took power—and a current civil engineer. He's the head of the house, a doting father, and a loving husband, taking time away from his busy schedule to plan a new home for his family on a plot of land he has purchased.

There is such love in this home, though, simply communicated in late-night games of foosball between Rubens and Marcello (Guilherme Silveira), the father dancing with his daughters, Eunice baking souffles for her family, and everyone silently agreeing that the stray dog the son has found on the beach has become a member of the family. Almost every scene in the first sections of the film is filled with smiles and laughter. It's the good life.

There are hints of what is to come in the early stages of Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega's screenplay, adapted from the biography by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (one of the family's children). Vera (Valentina Herszage), the eldest of the Paiva children, is stopped by soldiers while driving around the city. A Swiss ambassador visiting the country has been abducted by rebels, demanding the release of a few hundred political prisoners, and the army is quick to stop, question, and even assault anyone who fits some vague description of what a suspect might look like.

The scare makes Rubens and Eunice confront the reality that their family might not be safe. They arrange to send Vera to London with family friends, and with the rest of the children, they do what they must as parents to keep that harsh truth of what's happening from the rest of their kids. They still go to the beach, enjoy ice cream, have parties and guests at the house, indulge Eunice in her penchant for making souffles, and don't speak of politics, the military, or the increasing number of people being detained or arrested every day.

The real turning point here comes when men, dressed in plain clothes but armed and announcing some vague connection to the government, arrive at the Paiva's door. They have come to bring Rubens to an undisclosed location to give a "deposition." None of them knows that this is the last time they will ever see their husband or father alive, and they will never have the awful comfort of seeing him dead to confirm that their worst nightmare is a reality.

That's the despairing heart of Salles' film, which delves into the Paivas' story of official uncertainty, of unofficial knowledge of what likely has happened to Rubens, and of trying to search for the truth, while also simply attempting to carry on with life in the face of it all. The film is both a grieving cry against injustice—not only for what happened to the Pavia family, but also to so many others in Brazil during the dictatorship—and an unexpectedly moving portrait of resilience—not only in the hunt for the truth, but also in somehow continuing to live day by day with the weight of the unthinkable.

It is all on the shoulders of Eunice—suddenly the head of the house, a wife who cannot call herself a widow, a mother who must convince her children that they can continue to live, and an activist at a time when such a label could be a death sentence—and of Torres' performance. Of the former, it can be said that Eunice is presented here as a genuine hero and an enviable portrait of determination, who endures her own abduction by the government, navigates the intentionally complex system of denials and rumors in order to bring the truth of her husband's fate—as well as, by extension, those of so many others—to light, and maintains the spirits of her children in spite of these drastic changes.

Of the latter, it can be said that Torres' work is an astounding piece of acting, which balances so many emotional burdens, deferred dreams, shattered hopes, and internal sources of strength. Torres doesn't necessarily carry the film, which is rich in its understanding of the private struggles and bureaucratic labyrinth of living under such conditions, but her performance makes the cruelty of this government tangible in a way that gets to the core of the personal stakes and repercussions of living within an oppressive system.

The film is particularly bold in providing, not one, but two epilogues, each of which tells us something different about the conclusion of the Paivas' story—or, better, the absence of any real conclusion. The absence is twofold in I'm Still Here, because much is lost over the course of this story, never to return again. On the other hand, there's no conclusion because the family keeps going, in spite of fear and grief and uncertainty. It's as much a study of finding hope in a hopeless situation as it is a harrowing depiction of the situation itself.

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