A Family Survives Dictatorship in Oscar Frontrunner

Everything old is new again, or, as The Who sang in the ironically titled “Won’t Get Fooled Again” — “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” In this awful world, the counterculture becomes corporate culture, and the revolution becomes authoritarian rule. The state is overthrown by the opposition party, who then become the thing they hated — the revolutionary Ortega overthrew the dictatorial Somoza, only to become a dictator himself; Choibalsan took over from Amar and sent him to death before becoming infinitely worse; Rákosi and his ‘salami tactics’ supplanted Tildy, only to become… well, you get it.

The political register of existence is a ceaseless nightmare, and so we must group together to survive — help your family and friends, because the powers-that-be won’t. The title of I’m Still Here reflects that kind of resiliency and the cyclical nature of state-sponsored suffering. I’m Still Here is a Brazilian film from 2024 that is finally in theaters nationwide thanks to its multiple nominations at the 97th Academy Awards — for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best International Feature. It’s directed by the popular Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, who has stirred up acclaim over the past few decades for films such as The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station, and Linha de Passe.

I’m Still Here is the best film he’s made in 20 years, and it deserves the acclaim it’s received, especially for its lead performance from Fernanda Torres. While Demi Moore will likely win the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Substance, and Mikey Madison is absolutely deserving of a win for Anora, it’s Torres who honestly gives the most powerful performance of the Oscar-nominated actresses in 2024 thanks to this beautiful, simple film about family, memory, and power.

A Family You’d Want to Be a Part Of

I’m Still Here has the kind of beginning that makes you want to go full Pleasantville and crawl inside the movie screen and live with the illusion forever. The first act of the film is a beautiful example of “show, don’t tell” filmmaking, creating exposition out of organic, everyday interactions. While few families are as happy as the Paivas, the performances and direction completely convince us of this family’s contentment.

We watch them on the beach and in their home, dancing to vinyl records, playing backgammon, feeding the pipe dream of a new home, eating and gossiping and laughing and sighing. It’s an almost exhilarating first act, and it effectively ingratiates you with the Paivas family and their friends. You’re emotionally involved, which makes the rest of the film that much more devastating. After all, we’re reminded by the beginning text and the very first imagery (of Torres swimming in the ocean with a military helicopter rushing by above) that this story takes place at the height of the military dictatorship in Brazil, something which wouldn’t ease up until the ’80s.

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Joining O’Brien at the Oscars press conference were Raj Kapoor (executive producer and showrunner), Katy Mullan (executive producer), Rob Paine (co-executive producer), Mike Sweeney (producer and writer), Jon Macks (writer), Michael Bearden (music director), Alana Billingsley (production designer), and Mandy Moore (supervising choreographer).

Before long, a group of mysterious and intimidating men come knocking at the Paivas’ door, and the lovable and huggable patriarch of the family, Rubens, is taken away, ostensibly for a deposition. Multiple awkward men remain in the Paivas’ home while Rubens is gone. Eunice (Fernanda Torres) does what she can — she tries to humanize them and find some sort of compassion, making them food and keeping them comfortable. It doesn’t much matter, though, as she and her daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are the next subjects of a “deposition.” When hoods are placed over their heads, they realize that things are not as clear-cut as they’d hoped.

Learning How to Survive a Dictatorship

The majority of I’m Still Here deals with the reality of a woman — who may or may not have been married to a political ‘problem,’ and may or may not have known about it — trying to keep herself and her children alive and even happy despite the world around them. The most fascinating aspect of this is that element of happiness itself. Eunice and her family’s reactions sometimes rely upon a kind of “fake it ’til you make it” aesthetic, which may be mere artifice in some instances, but becomes a pure type of resilience and even rebellion. When a newspaper photographer organizes the family and asks them not to smile, to look sad, Eunice rebels with a smile and makes her children laugh in response. To her, despair is a kind of defeat.

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That’s just one of the many little ways in which Salles explores the survival techniques of this family. The most important of all of them is, well, family itself, and the ways in which they protect each other. Despite how powerful Eunice is, she couldn’t have survived this period without her children and her friends, who may as well be family. The same could be said for anyone in the film. I’m Still Here has some jarring time jumps, and each of them reminds us how important the Paiva family connection is as life ebbs and flows.

While the script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega is surprisingly complicated and sprawling, Salles takes an extremely focused approach in his direction that allows us to concentrate on one thing at a time. Whether that’s a dance in the living room, a torturous interrogation, a drive through a military checkpoint, or a game of foosball, Salles’ direction feels incredibly present and without distraction. We experience things as Eunice does, and without excess cinematic mechanics.

Aside from Adrian Teijido’s restrained but fitting cinematography, the only real cinematic tool Salles draws from is music by the great Nick Cave bandmate Warren Ellis. It’s a staggeringly beautiful score, and Salles is supremely wise in how he uses it; there are maybe two moments when it dominates everything, and they are the only two moments in which it should. It’s a perfect complement to the film, which is just about the most you can ask of a score.

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The Many Endings of ‘I’m Still Here’

That emotional power is slightly depleted by the time the film ends. First, it ends in a subtle yet powerful fashion. Then it jumps 25 years into the future and, after a while, manages to achieve an even more emotional and satisfactory ending. Then it jumps 20 years after that, requiring different casting and becoming ultimately excessive both in terms of narrative and emotional impact. (There is, of course, a kind of brilliance in having Torres’ mother, the great Fernanda Montenegro of a previous Walter Salles film, portray her as an older woman, though.) At 138 minutes, I’m Still Here could’ve easily trimmed 15 minutes, or it could’ve added 15 minutes to make its epilogues more meaningful. As it stands, the film’s ending lives in a sort of purgatory.

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And yet, to reference the beginning of this article, maybe that’s the point. History repeats itself, not just in the way that daughters become their mothers but in how revolutionaries become the authorities they topple. Brazil may have ended its period of fascistic Brazilian dictatorship, but it was pretty close to repeating history not so long ago, when Bolsonaro and his opposition party of president Lula da Silva tried to throw him into jail and corrupt the presidential election as a result.

Like many other countries, Brazil seems to be just one moment away from a totalitarian dictatorship. As the U.S. government is purged of previous appointees and replaced by Trump loyalists, Americans may want to start paying attention to these kinds of things, and give I’m Still Here a good, long watch.