‘I’m Still Here’: A cautionary tale

Award-winning Director Walter Salles’ new film I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) is a triumph of strength and patience. Salles tells the story of the kidnapping and murder of Brazilian Congressman Ruebens Paiva.

Paiva was a leader opposing the imposition of a military dictatorship on Brazil in 1964. A civil engineer by training, Paiva had also been a leader of the student movement called “Oil is Ours,” a progressive nationalist campaign to oppose foreign and corporate oil exploitation of Brazil’s resources.

In 1962, Paiva was the victorious Brazilian Labour Party candidate for Congress from Sao Paulo. When the military staged a coup, the resulting dictatorship ousted Paiva and other democrats from their government offices. Paiva took voluntary exile first in Europe, but ultimately returned to Brazil. All the while, he continued to work with the Brazilian left, setting up a dissident newspaper and helping to fund and consult with groups intent on replacing the dictatorship.

On Jan. 20, 1971, Paiva was arrested for alleged involvement with terrorists. In retrospect, his arrest may have been a case of mistaken identity or a pre-emptive strike on a longtime opponent of the dictatorship.

Salles’ film is rooted in the time prior to Paiva’s arrest and continues through his imprisonment and death, through his wife and family’s reactions and coping and concluding with a brief epilogue.

The focus is the heroic struggle of Paiva’s wife, Eunice Paiva, played by the brilliant Fernanda Torres in a bravura performance. Without striking a wrong note, Torres conveys the depth of emotion of a woman who must hold her family of five young children together even as she searches for answers to where her husband has been taken and when he will be returned.

The mix of dramatic problem crescendos with the mundane occurrences of life taxing Torres’ resources and resolve.

Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva

She battles a hostile bureaucracy for answers. She nurtures and grows her kids. She plumbs the depths of her convictions, finding purpose by achieving a law degree in middle age so that she can spend the rest of her life fighting for the rights of the indigenous people in Brazil.

I’m Still Here, then, is the story of humanitarian resilience in the face of overwhelming opposition. A family bound together by right-wing-inflicted tragedy. It’s a story of cobbling together a life of meaning through commitment to progressive values.

Torres’ deft performance is aided by the very lived-in script of writers Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, who based their work on Eunice’s son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir.

The greatest of Brazilian Directors, Walter Salles (Central Station and Motorcycle Diaries, the story of the youth of Che Guevara) has firmly guided the film along so as to recognize the political dangers while honoring the familial relationships that shaped and fueled this extraordinary life. Salles knew the Paiva family personally, spending formative years in their home and crediting their influence in his own political development.

The importance of such lessons cannot be underestimated at a time when our own country is facing similar threats of authoritarian rule and right-wing political danger. The titular reference—I’m Still Here—is not only to the heroic characters of the film, but also to the working class, which carries the struggle for social change forward.

I’m Still Here is now playing in theaters.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Michael Berkowitz
Michael Berkowitz

Michael Berkowitz, a veteran of the civil rights and anti-war movements, has been Land Use Planning Consultant to the government of China for many years. He taught Chinese and American History at the college level, worked with Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. with miners, and was an officer of SEIU.

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