I’m Still Here Review
A beautiful and subtly tense examination of a horrific real life story, that feels ripped authentically and heartbreakingly from a different time.
The Paiva family, caught in Brazil amidst the ever tightening grip of a military dictatorship in 1971, lives a lovely beach life. But when their ex-congressman father Rubens (Selton Mello) is taken by the military for unexplained reasons, the mother - Eunice (Fernanda Torres) - must not only try and find out what happened to him, and how to save him, but also keep her family together amidst the horror of what is happening to them.
I’m Still Here is a wondrous piece of international cinema that really showcases some of the beauty and grace that films like this can have. This Brazilian masterwork by Walter Salles explores the insidious fear of retaliation, the need to
It’s beautifully shot and designed, with the mix of Super 8 footage, and a grainy thread throughout, creating this hazy, mystic ambience about the whole thing. The visual tone makes you feel like nothing bad could happen in this place, only for the tragedy to unfold and you’re left completely uprooted emotionally.
The towering performance on display here is Fernanda Torres’, which is a crushing, heartbreaking and inspiring one. Through such a consciously restrained effort, Torres crafts a portrait of a strong woman not only barely holding herself and her family together, but actively working to reinvent herself amidst a shifting identity crisis brought on by arbitrary violence.
The rest of the cast around her is also strong, and even the children resonate - often a challenge when trying to have conflict between parents and children, without making those children seem too whiney or annoying to the audience. Here, the balance is struck perfectly.
From a plot perspective, this film is vastly aided by a story that felt fresh and unexplored to the Australian audience, and also was structured well to craft a consistent throughpoint and a strong beginning, middle and end. The storytelling from Salles is wonderful; right from the off, as one of their children runs off the beach with a dog, you feel a niggle of tension that something horrible is going to break this idyllic peace, and that tension just ratchets and ratchets up slowly, until the unthinkable happens not in a burst, but in a whimper. The military dictatorship destroys this family in such a quiet and un-dramatic way, but in a way that is still told with so much heart-in-the-throat tension, that you cannot help but be swept up.
The only problem really is the length. At 2 hours and 17 minutes, this film is undeniably too long, and with a number of codas at the end that feel completely unnecessary. Lopping the back 30 minutes off this movie would have kept it not just much tighter, but would have brought into sharper relief the horror that this mother has gone through.
