2024 – I’m Still Here
Was this a good movie? Yes. Should it have been nominated for Best Picture? No. Honestly, I’ll just start this off by saying that I believe that the Best International Feature category has its place, and that’s where this one belonged. In fact, it took home the Oscar for that category, which is good. It deserved that.
But I’ll get up on my soapbox for just a brief moment, and speak my piece. The Academy Awards is an American institution. I see nothing wrong with saying that because the Best International Feature category exists, only American made films should be in the Best Picture category. This was a Brazilian film spoken in Portuguese. But then what about English speaking movies that were made in say, England, I hear you cry. Well, that’s where the lines get blurred and I don’t have all the answers, and I’m full of crap. So there you have it.
But I stand by my opening statement. This was a good movie. It wasn’t great, but it was good. It was based on the real-life story of Eunice Paiva, a Brazilian wife and mother of five children, living under a military dictatorship, and the terrible hardships she endured when her home is suddenly raided and her husband is arrested. She never sees him again. She, herself, is also arrested later, and detained and tortured for twelve days. The rest of the movie follows her struggles to survive and care for her children, and eventually getting a law degree to support her family. She becomes an activist, fighting for Indigenous Rights in Brazil.
The movie had a bit of a slow pace, but kept my interest well enough. It spent a lot of time doing exactly what it needed to do, telling the story it needed to tell without any extraneous content or unnecessary subplots. It was almost matter-of-fact about the things that Eunice had to go through, and the actress playing her, Fernanda Torres, did a great job. I don’t feel like they sugar-coated anything, but they also didn’t make it overly dramatic, though maybe a few scenes might have benefited from a little heavier dramatization.
The cast was very good, but of course, Torres stood out. After all, it was her story. She did a great job in the scenes where she was incarcerated and tortured. The fear on her face was palpable. She had those trembling lips that spoke volumes, even when she wasn’t saying a word. But the scene where she really shined to me was the one in which she returned home. Her terrified children have been without either parent for nearly two weeks. She returns at night when they are all asleep. She is exhausted and scared. She just wants to scrub her dirty unwashed body clean, and go to bed. How difficult must that first night home have been?
But another actor who really stood out to me was Selton Mello, who played her husband, Rubens Paiva. He just seemed like the nicest guy in the world, making his forced departure from his beloved wife and children that much more horrifying. Mello really made me feel for Rubens, and by proxy, his family. When the men arrive to arrest him, they only say they are taking him in for questioning, but I remember thinking, as he got into the car, she’s never going to see him again.
Still in a dry, matter-of-fact way, we follow Eunice’s investigation into her husband’s disappearance. The official word was that he was never arrested, and then that he had fled the country. Suspecting these claims to be lies, she talks to his friends, his co-workers, and old associates, until she eventually learns through covert channels that he was, in fact, murdered in prison by those who arrested him.
Just as an interesting note, in my reading about this movie, I learned that, per Wikipedia, “Soon after its release in Brazilian theaters on 7 November 2024 by Sony Pictures Releasing International, the film was the target of an unsuccessful boycott by the Brazilian far-right, which denies that the military regime was a dictatorship.”
The last quarter of the movie took place in 1996 and 2014. In the first time period, the children have all grown into adults, and Eunice is well into her career as a lawyer and activist. In the second, the children are having a family gathering, and Eunice, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease, is in a wheelchair. Here she is played by Fernanda Montenegro. It seemed to me to be a sad ending for asuch an extraordinary woman.
In both of these eras, I liked the actor who played her only son, Marcelo, played by Antonia Saboia. True to life, he is portrayed as a tetraplegic, who has regain the use of his arms after a spinal injury. His character is significant because it was the real Marcelo Paiva who became an author and playwright, and who wrote his autobiography, Ainda estou aqui, which was adapted into this Oscar winning movie, though again, its win was for the Best International Feature category, not Best Picture. I’m perfectly happy with it winning the award it did, but even if it had been an American film in English, I am not sure I would have given it the nomination. Did it measure up to the other films that were nominated? Anora? Wicked? Dune part II? I don’t know. I’m not sure if it was on the same level. But it was good.