Fighting a mob is exhausting. Classic mob tactics deliberately grind us down: not answering direct questions, claiming “I didn’t know,” outright lies. Violence of the mind. These relentless tactics can leave the one fighting the mob feeling that they are the problem. In fact they standing up, holding their head high and saying “I refuse” – it’s courageous in the extreme. But perhaps a mob inevitably tends towards violence, whose hallmarks develop along a spectrum from threats to disappearances to torture and finally to murder and the subsequent destruction of evidence. Such a mob, a military dictatorship, controlled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. According to a 2019 essay in the widely respected magazine “Foreign Affairs,” it “stifled freedom of speech and violently suppressed opposition, killing or disappearing some 475 critics, including members of the armed resistance, and torturing thousands more.”
Maybe, after fighting a mob for much of the first half of one’s life and retaining one’s integrity, an inextinguishable energy develops which fires up the second half of that same life to protect and serve others. That is the premise of the documentary biopic “I’m Still Here” (Sony Pictures/Altitude Media), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse.
Based on an biography of Eunice Paiva written by her son, much of the movie is set in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s. It is in Portuguese with English subtitles. Eunice’s husband, Rubens, a former congressman, was abducted and then murdered by the military. The film recreates Eunice’s journey of discovery to uncover the truth, both about the murder but also about what her husband has been doing while alive (which led to the military’s interest in him in the first place).
If I were watching the film at home, I would make a big pot of tea and turn off all distractions to be able to really concentrate. The film requires attention and patience, most especially because the political history of 1970s Brazil is not likely to be familiar to those of us who live in Montrose: it certainly wasn’t to me. The film like a jigsaw puzzle: we have to work out a lot of things as the drama unfolds in front of us. And it is all the harder because we are watching a movie in translation. The beating heart of the filmmaking is the formidable strength and almost unbelievable resilience of Eunice and her children; the impression made on the audience is the extraordinary performance of Fernanda Torres in the lead role.
The film opens with Eunice as the playful mother and wife. With her children she dances around the house, teases at an ice cream parlour; with her husband she plays backgammon, watches the news. Her household seems open, generous, doesn’t take itself too seriously. But then the military arrive. We know that darkness has descended because the soundtrack abruptly changes. We suspect that life will never be the same again. We are ominously escorted inside a military prison to watch as Eunice spends several days, and from which Rubens never reappears. There are threatening sounds of torture and all the while Eunice desperately tries to assemble small fragments of information into a narrative which resembles accuracy. Eventually, Eunice is released back to her home for a frantic and previously unimaginable domestic life to unfold. What to tell the children and when? How hard to fight and how? Who to trust and how much? What to ask and what to avoid?
The second, shorter part of the movie takes place in São Paulo after the truth has been revealed. Eunice returned to university to study law. We see her as a middle-aged and then elderly lady organising on behalf of indigenous people who are fighting to protect their own land. She writes speeches, appears in the media, gives lectures. She has honed her dogged style and becomes an incredibly effective communicator. We assume that she wins many of the battles she takes on. Her son writes about her life and this becomes the movie we are watching, perhaps completing a life circle.
“I’m Still Here” is a serious film for the seriously-minded. It taught me something about the recent history of Brazil and events of which I was completely unaware as a child growing up in the UK. It made me feel grateful for that childhood: a knock on our front door in the 1970s would have never meant to my parents what it meant to the Paivas.
Adam Poole
9 March 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
