By Wilson Honório da Silva
To begin with, it must be said that, for various reasons, this is one of those texts that “took on a life of its own,” having already been written, rewritten, and published many times since November. To be writing about it again now obviously has to do with Fernanda Torres being awarded Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the prestigious Golden Globes for her impressive performance as Eunice Paiva in the film directed by Walter Salles.
This introduction is necessary because, as you will see, the main purpose of this article is not to pay tribute to Fernandinha and her undisputed talent, nor is it to talk about the award itself. That said, I think it is necessary to make some initial comments on these issues, since the film’s recognition by the foreign press in Hollywood says a lot both about the film and its importance at the present time.
An award against fear
In her thank-you speech, a visibly moved Fernanda Torres did not hide her sincere surprise at receiving the award with a veritable constellation of Hollywood stars as competitors, including Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Kate Winslet and Pamela Anderson. She dedicated the award to her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who competed for the same statuette 25 years prior for her masterful performance in “Central do Brasil” (1999), also directed by Walter Salles.
However, for me, the most significant part of her brief speech was the one that touched on what I think is the essence of the film and, in a way, is at the heart of what I wanted to discuss when I set out to write this article.
“This is proof that Art can survive in life, even in difficult times, like the ones Eunice Paiva went through. With so many problems in the world today, so much fear, this is a film that helped us to envision how to survive in difficult times like these.” With these words, Fernanda Torres established a bridge between the past and the present, between Art and History, between political positioning, artistic work, and personal choices.
But to continue, I must immediately confess that I am quite skeptical of these types of awards. This response has to do with the same way that I am unable to objectively consider those lists with “the ten best movies, songs, books, etc,” or the way I keep my distance from the “World Cup fanatics” atmosphere every time a Brazilian product competes for something “out there” in the world.
I say this because, convinced as I am that it is the “things of this world” and the dynamics of class struggle and social conflicts that reverberate in all aspects of life, I believe it is necessary to go beyond pure subjectivity to understand the impact that “I’m Still Here” is having around the world and, particularly, in the United States. This certainly has a lot to do with the “difficult times” mentioned by Fernanda.
After all, here in Brazil, not just any production has the capacity to bring more than three million viewers to theaters. And the fact that this is happening against the backdrop of not only the Bolsonaro period, but mainly its continuity, through a far right that never tires of showing signs of life as it continues to influence the positions and policies of the current government, is not only significant but laudable.
In the United States, the awards ceremony took place on the eve of the return of the repugnant Donald Trump to the presidency. And it took place in a context in which Hollywood and the American entertainment industry have been forced to “reinvent” themselves, mainly after the avalanche of scandals and accusations that swept through Hollywood following the “Me Too” movement in 2017, which exposed the normalization of sexual assault and violence backstage in artistic productions throughout the country.
It is important to remember this because the recent history of the Golden Globes was deeply impacted by the many ramifications of this process that was started by women and expanded by LGBTI+, the black and latino communites, and other marginalized sectors of society.
Until 2021, the award was given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and was considered one of the most prestigious in the world, serving as a “cultural and artistic” counterpoint to the blockbuster celebration represented by the Oscars. This is a story that unfortunately fell apart when it came to light that there was not a single black person among the 87 HFPA voters and that, in addition, many of them received “pampering” from the studios to influence their votes.
After this scandal came to light, and after facing the boycott of several artists (some of whom even returned awards received in previous years), in 2023, the award ceremony underwent a complete restructuring. This process was exemplary of the neoliberal times in which we live: the HFPA was dissolved, and a company privatized the award ceremony, creating the “Globe Golden Foundation” and investing in “diversity”.
Today, the jury is composed of 334 journalists from 85 countries (25 of them are from Brazil) who specialize in entertainment. And it consists of 47% women and 60% racial and ethnic minority (26.3% Latinos, 13.3% Asians, 11% blacks and 9% Middle Easterners).
In this context it is clear that, in addition to the intense promotional campaign being carried out by the Salles family and Globo (the film’s producer), “I’m Still Here” aroused sympathy, particularly among those who are even minimally attuned to the historical crossroads in which we are currently living. And moreover, they saw in it the possibility that the award’s prominence was a way of sending a message to conservatives, reactionaries, and xenophobes.
This is something that could also happen again at the Oscars in early March. But this in no way detracts from Fernanda’s award. Nor does it detract from what makes “I’m still here”, in my opinion, an important film for helping us think about the difficult times we are currently living in.
Remember, so that it does not happen again
In addition to being a beautiful and very well made film, “ I’m still here” must be seen mainly for what it is at heart: a film that denounces the deep and irreparable pain caused by the military regime established in 1964. At the same time, it promotes the struggle that is still necessary to rescue the memory, justice, and truth in of all those who were victimized, directly and indirectly, by the dictatorship. This is a process that implies, to begin with, the punishment of the agents of that suffering and injustice.
This is a necessity whose importance was once again made clear by the coup attempt planned by Bolsonaro, the military, and politicians who are nothing more than remnant excrescences of the military regime. It is also a necessity that is reaffirmed every second that one of the former agents of the dictatorship walks unpunished and free through society, or when one of the members of the Military Police turns his weapons against black or marginalized people, or whenever a follower of the far right practices historical revisionism to exalt the military regime.
Besides being apropos of a time like this, “I’m Still Here” is far from being universally acclaimed or even exempt from criticism. Leaving aside the boycott campaign of the far right (whose evident failure is also to be celebrated), part of the debate about the film has revolved around the “approach” taken by director Walter Salles. There is disagreement about the merits of the film’s “form” and its narrative, particularly in the way it is overly focused on the “family” and the personal dimensions of the story.
This is something that deserves to be discussed, especially because I believe that this approach is one of the film’s great strengths, which has allowed it to speak to so many viewers, including those from other countries. Moreover, it resulted in a film that fully relied on the performance of actors and actresses who, in the words of Fernanda Torres, had to discover “the power of restraining an emotion and perhaps letting the audience complete it for you”.
“Memory, justice and truth”: feminine nouns
As we know, the film is based on the memoirs of Eunice Paiva (1929-2018), wife of Rubens Paiva (1929-1971), a civil engineer and federal deputy for the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB). Rubens was indicted in 1964, then later abducted from his home and brutally tortured and murdered between January 20 and 22, 1971, and then reported as “disappeared.”
Based on the book of the same name published in 2015 by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (son of the couple and also author of the excellent “Feliz Ano Velho”), the film follows the family between the period immediately prior to Paiva’s “disappearance” and the publication of the report of the National Truth Commission (CNV) in December 2014. It also includes the year 1996, when, 25 years after the murder, Eunice finally received her husband’s death certificate.
One of the film’s key merits is precisely that it keeps Eunice at the center of the narrative, instead of relegating her to the role of “Ruben Paiva’s wife”.
Precisely for this reason, the narrative only mentions parts of the career of the politician and businessman Rubens Paiva (played by the always excellent Selton Mello). Paiva was a typical example of an upper-middle-class nationalist, whose role in the struggle against the dictatorship came both through his famous speech on Radio Nacional, when the coup was still underway on April 1, 1964, when he called on workers and students to resist (even within the framework of “legality”), as well as the way in which, in the following years, he strove to protect persecuted and exiled political prisoners.
Fernanda Torres’ performance is fundamental in “I’m still here” precisely because it gives a deep sense of humanity to the profound transformations that took place in Eunice’s life after her husband’s “disappearance.
She was a woman who, while never insensitive to political and social struggles, nor submissive to “social rules,” nevertheless lived within the “bubble of alienation” characteristic of her socioeconomic position.
This “bubble” is symbolized in the film by the home and family environment, which is not only removed from the real and profound hardships faced by the majority of the population, but is also impervious to many other ills of our society. This is particularly symptomatic in the “almost invisible presence” of the black maid, who treated “as if she belonged to the family.”
In real life, this experience was shattered by what she lived through during the dictatorship, including the 12 days she was imprisoned and held incommunicado in the basements of the regime, the years of searching and fighting, the period between 1971 and 1984 when her family was under military surveillance, and the permanent pain and absence caused by a body never found.
In this sense, Eunice is among those who literally transformed “mourning into struggle.” Women from different classes and social sectors, including Clarice Herzog, Thereza Fiel, Ana Dias, and Zuzu Angel (respectively, the widows of journalist Vladimir Herzog and workers Manuel Fiel Filho and Santo Dias da Silva, and the mother of Stuart Angel), had to reinvent their lives and put themselves at the forefront of the struggle for “memory, truth, and justice” in relation to the crimes of the dictatorship.
This was a struggle that, in Eunice’s life, also involved a return to university in 1973, where she studied law (at the age of 48). While her first aim was to better fight her battle for memory and justice, she later came to act as one of the main defenders of native peoples, their lands, and their rights.
In the film, some of these facts are only mentioned, while others are left out. And this is not a criticism of the film, on the contrary. While it is true that it is “based on real events”, it is not exactly the “facts” (or the “action”, cinematically speaking) nor the details of the characters’ lives, or the story that makes “I’m Still Here” a great movie.
Its strength comes from the way it helps us think about something else: the role of memory in the construction of History itself. This is something the film builds with enormous poetic charge, especially because Eunice Paiva, who fought so hard for the preservation of memory, lived her last years under the impact of Alzheimer’s disease, whose main symptom is precisely the loss of memories.
Without memory, history remains adrift
I am among those who believe that one of the greatest strengths of cinema is its ability to tell stories through images, words, and sounds that acquire meanings and senses that go far beyond the obvious and the literal, and that allow us, regardless of the period they deal with, to reflect on past, present, and future, or make us delve into fantasy and fiction to think about reality and humanity.
And it is in this sense that I consider “I’m still here” a necessary, beautiful, and very powerful film. It manages to start from a true story, from a concrete experience, to discuss something much deeper, synthesized in a highly poetic way in the sequences that open and close the film.
At the beginning, we see a “drifting” Eunice, floating in the sea, while a helicopter (perhaps carrying a body that would be thrown into the sea) flies over a Rio de Janeiro that is a real “postcard.” This serves as a backdrop for the life of a family that, like so many others of its social stratum, lives in a bubble, like so many others, which is created by the movements of the “sea of history.”
It is a family, in short, that, despite being affected by the dictatorship and opposing the regime, to a large extent lives “adrift” from History. In other words, they let “the ship pass,” as if trying to escape from the memory of the past, in an attempt to maintain a sense of security, harmony, and comfort, the fragility of which is about to be cruelly and violently shown.
In the last scenes, illuminated by Fernanda Montenegro’s fabulous and moving performance, we have an 85-year-old Eunice, once again “adrift.” But now, it is because she has been living with Alzheimer’s disease for a decade.
She is a woman whose gaze, so distant and oblivious to the world, comes to life and strength in an instant, awakened by the television news that announces the publication of the Truth Commission report. This was a report to which she contributed greatly, and which is based on 1,200 testimonies that document, in terrible and painful detail, the crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship and its agents.
This is a fabulous moment in cinematographic terms, especially because it is also in this sequence where we see her son Marcelo (Antonio Saboia) as the only “witness” of Eunice’s reaction to the news. Only he perceives that, for a second, his mother has anchored in some safe harbor from which she can review the “sea of memories” that, at that moment, seem to explode in her eyes in front of the TV set.
It is a dialogue of cameras, gestures and glances that, metaphorically, foreshadows the writing and the title of the book itself. Marcelo “sees” that Eunice is still “here.” Beyond Alzheimer’s, beyond herself, beyond History, she “is” at the same time a living memory of the crimes committed by the dictatorship. At the same time, she is an important force against the erasure of that memory, as she remembers despite the dictatorship’s attempt to erase its victims, which they tried to do to her husband by throwing his body into the sea.
Symbolically, it is at this moment that the book is born. And it was this “absent presence” that Salles managed to transfer to the screen. In that sense, this film is a reminder that, like all the others whose lives were marked or taken away by the dictatorship, Eunice will only remain “here,” her life will only continue to have meaning, if her memory is preserved and if her struggle is not forgotten.
Let other memories come…
Something that drew attention and provoked criticism from many people, as I alluded to above, has to do with the director’s choices in telling this story, starting with the focus on the Paiva family. This choice, as is characteristic of the product of human creativity, reverberated in both the “form” and “content” of the film.
For example, it is a fact that the staging is rather restricted to the space of the house and family life, represented with an illuminated and harmonious “perfection.” However, this can also be read as a counterpoint to the dark basements of the dictatorship and, above all, as a “reminder” of the type of “alienation” specific to that class of family, which is determined by its socioeconomic condition.
It is symptomatic, for example, that, however “informed” and unquestionably anti-dictatorial the family is, in the film it is apparent that they are also distant from what is happening on the ground. This is emphasized in the scenes in which the “outside world” is recorded through the mediation of a Super 8 camera, or through newspapers, radio, and television, which create the illusion of distance that is maintained until it is shattered by the occupation of the house by the repressive forces.
Moreover, Salles’ choices are quite coherent with the aforementioned objectives, since part of the film’s argument is the way in which personal and historical memory mix, confuse, and influence each other.
In this sense, both Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s text and Walter Salles’ direction are laudable, especially because so many other films that have focused on the subject, which are also based on excellent biographical accounts and even more directly related to the direct struggle against dictatorial regimes, turned out to be dreadful films. Suffice it to recall “What is this, comrade?” (Bruno Barreto, 1997) and “Olga” (Jayme Monjardim, 2004).
This brings to mind a final comment regarding the “necessity” of a film like “I’m Still Here.” Regardless of the questionable quality of the two examples mentioned above, they are part of a very small list of films that seek to explore the dark times of the dictatorship, and the struggles waged against the regime.
It is true that there are a number of good and memorable films, including “Eles não usam black-tie” [They don’t wear black-ties] (1981), “Pra Frente Brasil” [Forward Brazil] (1982), “Cabra marcado para morrer” [Goat marked for death] (1984), “Que bom te ver viva” [How good it is to see you alive] (1989), “Lamarca” (1994), “Cabra-Cega” [Goat-Blind] (2004), ‘O ano em que meus pais saíram de férias’ [The year my parents went on vacation] (2006), ‘Batismo de sangre’ [Baptism of blood] (2006), ‘Tatuagem’ [Tattoo] (2013), ‘O dia que durou 21 anos’ [The day that lasted 21 years] (2013) or ‘Marighella’ (2021).
However, considering the dimension of the crimes committed by the dictatorship and the heroic examples of struggle by the men and women who confronted the regime in the most diverse areas of society (social movements, art and culture, oppressed sectors, etc.), Brazilian Cinema is still far from being the instrument of “memory, justice, and truth” that it could and should be.
This is something, unfortunately, once again determined by “the things of the world.” It is rooted in the way in which our never-completed re-democratization was carried out. To understand how this may have influenced Brazilian film production, it is enough to compare it with the films produced about the Chilean and Argentine dictatorial regimes, which, as a reflection of more radicalized processes of rupture, approach the subject in a much more challenging and comprehensive manner.
Here, the “pact for the transition” followed by the cowardice of all governments since then (including those of the PT) in the face of the military have greatly contributed to the fact that our artistic and cultural production on the subject has also been stifled.
The fact that cinema, even though it is an obligatorily collective creative process, is mostly subject to the “rules of the market” does not help the production of films that are more radical in their approach or focus on sectors that have been historically marginalized.
But this is another story. For now, the fact is that, regardless of new nominations and awards, “I’m Still Here” is continuing to bring people to theaters. May it continue to help us think, not least because this is a part of our History that needs to be recalled in every possible way, always. We must continue to remember because we cannot allow totalitarian, reactionary, repressive, and oppressive experiences to be repeated. And, we know that this is still unfortunately a threat, it too is “still here”. And this is true not only in Brazil, but all over the world.
One last note: pay attention to the fabulous soundtrack, which includes real gems such as “É preciso dar um jeito, meu amigo” (Erasmo Carlos), “A festa do Santo Reis” (Tim Maia), “Baby” (Os Mutantes), “Jimmy, renda-se” (Tom Zé), “Agoniza, mas não morre” (Nelso Sargento and Beth Carvalho), “Pétit Pays” (Cesária Mota) and “Fora da ordem” (Caetano Veloso).
Originally published at www.opiniaosocialista.com.br, 1/7/2025.
Translation: John Prieto
