I'm Still Here - Review

I’m always struck by the power of cinema. It is the one language we can all speak. Good films can be understood just from viewership, from the sensory experience of sight and sound. Great films can leave a lasting legacy, where the language of the screen transcends our experience and lives long in the fabric of our lives. When watching English-language films I often find it hard to notice this power, it only truly comes out when I’m watching films in other languages. I’m Still Here, Brazil’s nomination for Best International Feature and shock Best Picture nominee is one of those examples of great films that show the power of cinema.

The film opens in Rio 1970 with Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) on Leblon beach having a nice time with her husband and 5 children. They have an idyllic home just off the beachfront, taking in a stray dog and looking after it. However, the Rio of 1970 is under a military dictatorship that threatens the peaceful lives the Paivas live, especially after the husband Rubens (Selton Mello) has returned home after a 6-year exile.

The serene lifestyle is marred by tension. Early in the film, one of Eunice’s daughters is intensely interrogated in a tunnel, searching for rebels involved in the kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador. A few days later, Rubens is taken from his home by armed men, leaving Eunice to convince her children their father will be safe in an intense journey showing victims of indirect injustice and the power of mothers.

Early on, part of the power is how finely balanced the dichotomy between family fun and civil unrest in a brilliant screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega. Salles makes great use of a family film camera, which acts as capturing family memories, holding these moments close and trying to hide the dangers of the armed police which patrol the promenade from the younger family members. The military are like performers, with great precision, spouting the words of the dictatorship without much consideration of what they are saying – or if they are considering it, they are too afraid to rebel.

This is a Rio of helpless injustice. Christ the Redeemer hangs in the viewpoint from the family’s garden, a sign of faith, yet even he must watch on and see the civil disrepute and those unrightly affected by the dictatorship. It is often a grim and dark film, with some distressing scenes, often shown in the solo perspective of Fernanda Torres’s Eunice, in a ferocious performance that is undoubtedly one of the best in this year’s Oscar cycle. Whilst Salles isn’t giving anything overly stylistic, he complements Torres’s tour de force performance with the imagery of water, Whether that be the use of a shower acting as a cleansing, or  Torres’s figure floating on the water, just about surviving.

I’m Still Here has the stress of the horror film, bringing to light a harrowing tale of survival against Brazillian dictatorship. With a phenomenal performance by Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here shows that cinema is still one of the most powerful mediums to tell important, personal and universal stories.