{"id":20179176,"date":"2025-01-29T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T16:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/?p=20179176"},"modified":"2025-01-29T00:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T08:58:11","slug":"im-still-here-paints-portrait-of-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/im-still-here-paints-portrait-of-courage\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m Still Here\u2019 Paints Portrait of Courage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the opening frames of Walter Salles\u2019 I\u2019m Still Here<\/em>, we\u2019re introduced to the Paiva family of Rio de Janeiro, through a montage of scenes of ordinary life in that fabled tropical city. Kids playing futebol<\/em> and volleyball on the beach, families picnicking, the discovery of a lost puppy and some fun-loving teenagers smoking a joint and taking videos out the window of their car as they roll down the street. A portrait of carefree people in a warm country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before that reassuring sequence, back at the very beginning, the first camera shot foretells a different story. Eunice Paiva (played by Fernanda Torres), mother of five school-age children, is swimming in the gentle surf of Copacabana Beach when a noisy military helicopter flies over. The sight of it stirs a worried reaction on Eunice\u2019s face. Rio de Janeiro in 1970 is under a military dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At home, Eunice\u2019s kids enjoy the rising expectations that go along with life in a comfortable middle-class family. The eldest daughter, Veroca (Valentina Herszage), is on her way to stay with friends in England. She and her younger teenage sisters all share a European outlook\u2014keeping their passports current and listening to Serge Gainsbourg records. Even after Veroca and her friends get rousted one night by a police roadblock (searching for leftist students?), there\u2019s the sense that these children essentially have the freedom to do what they want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their father, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman now working as an engineer, is another story entirely. Much to the chagrin of his wife, soft-spoken Rubens maintains clandestine connections with people under government suspicion. Late-night phone calls and envelopes slipped under the door. Eunice knows better than to question her husband too closely about all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storm clouds are gathering. Audiences familiar with the films of Costa-Gavras, Hector Babenco and Pablo Larra\u00edn, or the novels of George Orwell, will recognize the territory. Long before the plain-clothes security thugs knock on the Paiva family\u2019s door, politically aware audience members will begin bracing themselves for the worst. The worst indeed happens, and it\u2019s Eunice who bears the weight of events for her sheltered family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the grim government investigation unfolds, Eunice is put through the same drill that other Brazilian families are being subjected to\u2014in common with residents of Argentina and Chile during the age of rightwing Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s. At first, she\u2019s questioned about communists and forced to study a large volume of mug shots of suspected subversives. On one of the pages she finds her husband\u2019s photo. And then her own. Later, Eunice and her daughter Eliana are taken away and temporarily imprisoned. Left alone in her cell, Eunice\u2019s body begins to tremble. When mother and daughter are finally released, Eunice is denied access to the family\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m Still Here<\/em> is not an action-packed thriller. Eunice does not join an underground resistance cell nor run for office as an opponent of the regime. Her response to the threats against her family is non-violent, yet eventually effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military junta\u2019s plan to cure Brazil\u2019s social ills by forcing ordinary people into cowed submission has the opposite effect on Eunice Paiva. Quietly fighting on the home front, she starts a letter campaign and rouses public resistance to the government\u2019s assault on her family\u2019s civil liberties. I\u2019m Still Here<\/em> is essentially a true story. Paiva earned a law degree and became a human rights activist before her death in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bertolt Brecht\u2019s Mother Courage<\/em>, one of the German leftist playwright\u2019s most provocative dramas, could make a fitting brand name for Eunice as well, despite the differences between Brecht\u2019s emblematic anti-heroine\u2014a war scavenger\u2014and the righteous survivor Eunice. Actor Torres has the face and demeanor of a true Mother Courage. And Salles\u2019 restrained character study is a worthy successor to his socially relevant dramas The Motorcycle Diaries<\/em> and Central Station<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m Still Here is playing now in San Francisco and starting Jan. 31 in Berkeley. The movie also opens Feb. 7 at 3Below Theaters in San Jose and AMC Mercado 20 in Santa Clara.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director Walter Salles\u2019 movie \u2018I’m Still Here\u2019 unfolds during the age of rightwing Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14789,"featured_media":20179178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[38],"tags":[14846,12362],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n