I'M STILL HERE (A-minus) - It was a heavy weekend. There was a memorial service for a colleague and friend who died in November. And then there was Walter Salles' paean to perseverance, a drama drenched in Brazil's military dictatorship of the early 1970s, "I'm Still Here."
It is an emotionally challenging movie, but it is full of heart and humanity. Based on a true story, it follows Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) and her five children after her husband, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman in the days before a military coup six years earlier, is snatched by government thugs, never to return. It is Torres' movie from beginning to end, a performance so intense and moving that you often ache for both her and her character.
Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") grounds this is an authentic family life in a seaside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The Paiva household buzzes with activity -- kids, a housekeeper, a dog and numerous friends, parties filled with food and fun. Record needles drop on vinyl, a 16 mm camera shudders as it captures memories, photographs from these happy days pile up. I was transported to the '70s watching the kids come and go, often barefoot on their way to or from the beach or a street soccer match. The first half hour is a master class in narrative table-setting, as Rubens and Eunice provide a family sanctuary that we know will be invaded and forever changed.
Meanwhile, street scenes and news reports cast a pall over the charmed life the family leads. The parents send their oldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage) to London with friends going into exile, and Eunice and Rubens hunker down, knowing that Rubens is a target. We are aware that he is surreptitiously volunteering as a drop-source for communications among the resistance. Not only does he get escorted out of this happy home, but a day or two later so do Eunice and another daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski). Few horror movies can match the banality of evil imposed on Eunice for two weeks in a small cell, subjected to the inquisitions of apparatchiks, finding only a sliver of humanity in the occasional apologies of a sympathetic but powerless guard.
The film then becomes a tale of bravery and endurance. Eunice will get unofficial word of Rubens' death, but she will pick and choose how she confides in each child, eventually uprooting them from that tainted dwelling and moving them to Sao Paulo. Eunice stays active in the resistance network, keeping Rubens' story alive. In a memorable scene, when posing the kids for a news photographer, she resists the journalists' request to appear stoic, and she insists that the kids smile for the photo, and they happily oblige. That bravado in the face of tyranny will become a rallying cry that will echo through the years as the family's rallying cries. Torres, throughout, is never short of riveting.
Salles jumps ahead 25 years, to the mid-'90s, when the democratic government, in its reconciliation phase, finally provides Eunice, now a lawyer and activist in her own right, with Rubens' death certificate. She is accompanied by her son, Marcello (Antonio Saboia as an adult; Guilherme Silveira as a spunky child), whose real-life memoirs formed the basis for the movie. The film then transitions to Eunice's late-in-life work; another jump, to 2014, will find her infirm and wracked by Alzheimer's, as her children and grandchildren carry on the tradition of joyful gatherings.
The film embarks on a journey that goes from heart-warming to heart-pounding to heart-breaking. It is a profound rumination on the determination of individuals in the face of authoritarianism, and you can't help but feel uneasy watching it in an era in which 20th-century fascism is returning to fashion. The only criticism is that Salles overstays his welcome here. He doesn't need the 18 minutes beyond the two-hour mark. It's as if he wasn't confident enough to end it in an earlier era and perhaps he was being too faithful to Marcello's memoirs. The scenes with subsequent generations lack the spark of 1970-71, and there are too many interchangeable characters by that point, dragging down the narrative. A quick flash-forward is all that was needed, and the diminishing returns are the only barrier between Salles and a masterpiece.
BONUS TRACKS
Salles' characters bask in the pop music of the day, and while there are understandable nods in dialogue to the Beatles in the wake of their breakup, he resists the lure of obvious needle-drops and instead celebrates some catchy Brazilian hits of the era. Here is "E Preciso Dar Um Jeito, Meu Amigo" by Erasmo Carlos:
Caetano Veloso is name-checked in the film along with John Lennon by Veroca, who is besotted with London. Here is "Baby" by Os Mutantes":
Tom Ze with "Jimmy, Renda-se":
And a rollicking Tex-Mex-style number, "A Festa Do Santo Reis" by Tim Maia:
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