NEW YORK (AP) — In films, political resistance typically takes the type of protest, starvation strike or armed rebellion. However in Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” it comes within the form of a defiant smile.
The movie stars Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva, the spouse of Rubens Paiva, a former leftist Brazilian congressman who, on the top of the nation’s army dictatorship in 1971, was taken from his household’s Rio de Janeiro house and by no means returned.
“The smile is a kind of resistance,” Torres says. “It’s not that they’re living happily. It’s a tragedy. Marcelo recently said something that Eunice said that I had never heard: ‘We are not a victim. The victim is the country.’”
“I’m Still Here,” which opens in theaters Jan. 17, is a profoundly shifting story of household life and political oppression. It’s a deeply Brazilian story, made by one of many nation’s most acclaimed administrators (Salles’ movies embrace “Central Station” and “Motorcycle Diaries”) and starring the daughter of one of many nation’s best stars, Fernanda Montenegro. She seems late within the movie because the older Eunice.
However “I’m Still Here” has taken on added that means in Brazil and past. The movie was launched on the heels of the presidency of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who Brazilian federal police final yr reported tried a coup in 2022 to remain in energy. (Bolsonaro, who has admiringly known as the 1964 army coup “Liberty Day,” has denied any involvement.) Within the years that Salles developed the movie, he noticed quite a few different international locations, and their residents, reckoning with the rise of strongmen political leaders.
“When we started to develop the project seven years ago, it was truly about trying to bring light to a past that wasn’t sufficiently focused by Brazilian cinema,” says Salles. “Then, little by little, the political situation shifted to the point that we realized the film was about our present, and also about our future.”
These reverberations, and the movie’s acute sense of humanity, has made “I’m Still Here” a box-office sensation at house and a celebrated Oscar contender within the U.S. At Sunday’s Golden Globes, Torres received finest actress in a drama over a starry subject of nominees together with Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman. “I’m Still Here” is Brazil’s Oscar submission.
To Torres, Eunice Paiva is a heroine of Greek dimensions: a Penelope for contemporary occasions who received’t let the spirit of her household die.
“She’s a great guide, this character, for nowadays,” Torres says. “It’s not about should we be to the right or to the left. It’s about humanity. It’s about the endurance of the family.”
For Salles, the story of the Paivas is especially private. Rising up in Rio, he was pleasant with one in every of their kids and sometimes visited their teeming, music-filled house.
“I remember a house where the door was always open — very unlikely under military dictatorship,” says Salles. “The windows were always open. Every time I went there, I met people I had never met before. It was a place to which people drifted. Later, I realized this was the Brazil I wanted to live in.”
The 59-year-old Torres, whose father was the actor Fernando Torres, grew up throughout the dictatorship that lasted till 1985. Her first recollections of life underneath it are of her dad and mom nervously getting ready to carry out performs for the federal government censor, who may — and typically did — cancel a manufacturing days earlier than opening.
Eunice in some methods reminded Torres of her personal mom. Each mom and daughter had a historical past with Salles. Considered one of Montenegro’s most well-known roles was her Oscar-nominated efficiency in Salles’ “Central Station.” The 95-year-old Montenegro is the primary and solely Brazilian nominated for finest actress; her daughter might be the second.
Torres had acted in earlier Salles’ movies, “Foreign Land” (1994) and “Midnight” (1998). However she had in recent times starred in in style TV collection and written a novel. When Salles despatched her the script for “I’m Still Here,” she imagined he was simply in search of suggestions from a good friend. For Salles, although, it finally mattered that “I’m Still Here” could be, like its story, a household affair.
“It touched on something so personal that, more than anything else, I needed allies with her sensibility and intelligence and talent to reach the end of the journey,” says Salles.
Salles, guided by his personal recollections, sought to recreate the vigorous environment of the Paiva house, the place artwork and flicks had been freely mentioned and somebody was normally operating out to Ipanema Seaside. “I’m Still Here” follows the tragedy of what occurs to the Paiva household and this house, however the film is sustained by the heat the Paivas fostered regardless of the army regime.
“We cooked in that house, to the point where Marcelo, the first time he entered the house, said, ‘It smells like my house,’” says Salles. “It was really about not trying to create a fictional family but more about inviting the spectator to spend time with a family I had met personally. It was about capturing life happening.”
Salles’ melodrama-free therapy of the story — one other deviation from typical movies of political resistance — took adjusting to. The one scene by which Torres, as Eunice, cried, Salles reduce. The actress estimates she has only one close-up in your complete movie.
“When we were doing it, I was like, ‘Is it going to be good? It’s so simple,’” says Torres. “When I watched it for the first time, I couldn’t remember when I started to cry.”
As an alternative of following acquainted story beats, “I’m Still Here” unfolds with time, as Eunice refuses to permit the Paiva household’s grief to be the defining issue of their lives. Her resistance is cussed perseverance. It took her 25 years to get a government-issued demise certificates for her husband. Lastly, in 2014, a Nationwide Reality Fee report detailed the killing or disappearing of 434 folks by the army regime, with tens of hundreds extra tortured.
“This may have to do with today’s world. We are faced with losses and the angst of times we don’t fully know what’s going to happen. Will someone knock on your door?” Salles says. “If you somehow sense the magnitude of joy at some point, this may be how you find the inspiration to resist.”
