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‘I’m Still Here’: Faces of the Resistance
Walter Salles’ latest drama about life under Brazil’s military dictatorship is a searing indictment of right-wing regimes
In one warm and inviting scene in I’m Still Here, the latest historical drama from Brazilian director Walter Salles, a young woman is packing for college. Salles’ camera pans around her bedroom, showing the different posters on her wall — signs of a political identity. Pleasantly, I noticed the poster of Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967) and smiled, not solely because I recognized a movie I love, but because it represents something crucial about the woman. She is a revolutionary.
The woman’s name is Vera (Valentina Herszage), the real-life daughter of Rubens (Selton Mello) and Eunice (an excellent Fernanda Torres) Paiva, a family that became famous for resisting Brazil’s military dictatorship.
The allusion to La Chinoise helps define Vera, but it also places I’m Still Here in the same lineage. Salles pays tribute to a revered political filmmaker who influenced his thinking by making a political film about the socialist struggle for a new generation. And although I’m Still Here is less formally audacious than La Chinoise, Salles’ straightforward filmmaking style packs a more powerful emotional punch. If you have a pulse, it’s impossible to watch the movie and still support right-wing regimes. By the end of the movie, I felt for the Paiva family too deeply. Their moral righteousness wasn’t up for debate in my mind.
I’m Still Here opens in 1970, and the Paiva family lives in Rio De Janeiro footsteps away from Leblon Beach. The house is full of love, laughter, art, and ideas. Rubens is a former congressman having recently returned to Rio De Janeiro after a self-imposed exile following the 1964 coup d’état, which overthrew the left-wing president João Goulart. History tells us that the United States supported the coup, as it did around the same time in Chile and the Congo because it feared the rise of revolutionary foreign governments that would implement socialist policies for the poor and working-class. The unintended consequences speak for themselves.
A retired politician, Rubens secretly helps his fellow expats, taking clandestine meetings and phone…
