By FLAVIO AGUIAR*

Considerations about the film directed by Walter Salles

“What is, does not always appear to be; but what appears certainly is.” “Appearances can be deceiving.”
(Brazilian sayings, apparently contradictory).

1.

The two sayings in the epigraph above apply to Walter Salles’ film, and they are not contradictory. Quite the contrary. As always, in the world of sayings, one finds both an affirmation and its negation. “Slow and steady wins the race,” says one; “Those who wait, despair,” says the other, right next to it. The “truth” belongs to neither one nor the other, separately. Wisdom lies in playing with their balance, recognizing when one applies, and when the other.

This is what happens with the film, which plays alternately or simultaneously with light and dark. And as we will see, clarity hides and reveals its dark side; while darkness hides and reveals the clarity of what the luminous appearances conceal.

This game begins with the title, taken from the book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (which I have not read, let me clarify). The “I am still here” refers to someone who is no longer there, but whose absence affirms the presence of their denunciation.

I will make a preliminary note. I have read many comments – pertinent and relevant – about the political impact of the film, both as a review of the past and as an intervention in our complex present, in which those who yearn for fascism and dictatorships abound in Brazil and throughout the world. I have also read many praises, all more than deserved, for the performance of the award-winning Fernanda Torres and also that of her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, in the final moments of the film, as a Eunice Paiva suffering from Alzheimer's. But I have read very little – almost nothing, in fact – about the film itself and its cinematic language. That is what I will address here, at least in part.

2.

I warn you that I have only seen the film once. Therefore, everything here is subjugated by my memory, where the images of the film are mixed with the memories of the times it evokes, which I also lived dramatically.

What struck me most when I saw the film was what I called the light/dark game in the title and at the beginning of this article.

A constant in the film is the coexistence on the screen of light images with dark images. The latter can be in the background of the former, or to the side. For example, in the many close-ups of the characters' faces, in which they either appear illuminated against a dark background or next to a darkened corner of the screen.

Or the light/dark play occurs through alternation. For example, between the illuminated scenes of the Rio de Janeiro landscape and the dark scenes of the dictatorship's dungeons, that is, the interrogation prison, with its atrocious sounds of torture. In this particular case, I think the film is very successful, denouncing violence without resorting to excessive ketchup and purple bruises of exacerbated brutalism.

Or that game still takes place at the moment when the faces are covered by the darkness of the hoods and so on.

I would like to point out that in this context “darkness” does not refer to a color, or even an absence of color, in the classical definition. Rather, it denotes the inability or impossibility of “seeing,” as is the case with hooded people.

It turns out that illuminated scenes are sometimes full of darkness, while the darkness reveals something that is hidden behind the lighting on the surface.

And the film begins with one of these luminous surfaces. After losing his mandate as a deputy, which was revoked by Institutional Act No.^o. 1, Rubens Paiva tries to reorganize himself into a “normal” life with his family in Rio de Janeiro. But as dark omens of what is to come, trucks full of soldiers and armored vehicles prowl the streets and the characters’ steps.

These flashes of light end once and for all when the military/police invade the family home. While some take the former deputy away – and forever – those who remain in the house, in a symbolic gesture, close the curtains on the windows: the dark side descends upon everyone.

Eunice and her daughter end up being taken to the dungeon, with the darkness of the hoods covering their faces.

And the days in the darkness of prison follow, with repetitive, exhausting, humiliating, disconcerting, absurd interrogations.

And it is in this dark shadow of prison that the clarity of the dictatorship is revealed: before it, and for it, there is no innocence or innocents. It is about extinguishing the light of the people targeted, making them confess what they know and even what they do not know, forcing them to gravitate towards the mourning to which they are condemned: the mourning for the loss of freedom.

But in the case of Eunice Paiva there is also the double mourning of the loss of her husband, of which she gradually becomes aware, and of the loss of her body, which disappeared into the bowels of monstrosity. And the vile darkness of lies sets in. Paiva “disappeared”, was “kidnapped by a guerrilla group”, “never came this way”, according to the official versions.

Eunice also ends up learning about her husband's secret life, behind the luminous "normality" that hid it. He and some friends clandestinely helped people persecuted by the dictatorship, bringing and taking information, receiving and distributing correspondence, facilitating people's escape or providing them with hiding places. For this he was arrested, tortured and murdered.

As time passes, collecting words and impressions here and there, she becomes certain that her husband was killed. But the painful clarity of this revelation remains clouded by the dark impossibility of “seeing” his body, kidnapped once again by the vile decision, on the part of his executioners, to not only commit the crime, but also to commit the second crime of preventing his recognition.

3.

With this game of light and dark, the film acquires a metaphorical dimension. When Eunice and her daughter are hooded, the whole of Brazil is hooded. And in that interrogation room, the game is complete: the interrogators, with their photo albums, corner Eunice, who, in fact, knows nothing about her husband's activities after his impeachment, pointing out that for the dictatorship, preserving the lives of persecuted people was a “crime against the country.”

But the film's camera, in turn, corners the interrogator, with the actor's brilliant performance, exposing his structural arrogance, the fact that, as in the historical Inquisition, the defendant (because the police station dresses up as a court and becomes a scaffold) is judged in advance for a crime she does not know what it was because she has no right to know. The only "right" she has left is to confess to a crime she did not commit.

The hooding metaphor returns, mutatis mutandis, at the end of the film. Eunice/Fernanda Montenegro stares in amazement, suffering from Alzheimer's, at a television screen, while the rest of the family socializes over a perhaps Sunday lunch.

His image, once again, serves as a metaphor for the entire country, this Brazil oppressed by policies that promote oblivion, sponsored by corporate media that conspired for the dictatorship, supported it and stigmatized its opponents as terrorists, or by repressive agencies, whether private or state. The television report on the dictatorship amounts to a mea culpa quae sera tamen, albeit belated, although it has its merits.

Shrouded in the darkness of Alzheimer's, Eunice/Fernanda recognizes, with a shy and delicate smile (genius of direction, interpretation and camera), the image of her kidnapped, murdered husband whose body has disappeared.

This XNUMXth-century gesture The image contains a profound revelation. Promoted by the dictatorship and its satanic worshippers today, forgetfulness seems to be Brazil's calling. It is not. Memory resists, even in the delicate sensibilities of nebulosities.

In the early 1970s, when the kidnapping and murder of Rubens Paiva took place, the first moments of the government of General Emílio Médici were taking hold in Brazil, catapulted into acceptance by a bourgeoisie satisfied with the repression and a middle class seduced by the promises of owning a home and a second or third car, in the self-proclaimed “Brazilian miracle”.

Those were times that were simultaneously euphoric and sinister, magical and completely dark. The dictators and their henchmen believed, and we, the crushed, tortured, murdered, exiled or silenced resistance, believed that nothing would ever happen again in the country. The same belief that today's worshippers of dictatorship and resurgent fascism want to impose on us.

Fortunately, they were, and we were, and they are still completely wrong today. And this film, with its sophisticated and transparent language, flying over darkness and blackouts of memory, is proof of this.

* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]

Reference

I'm still here
Brazil, 2024, 135 minutes.
Directed by: Walter Salles.
Screenplay: Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega.
Cinematography: Adrian Teijido.
Editing: Affonso Gonçalves.
Art Direction: Carlos Conti
Music: Warren Ellis
Cast: Fernanda Torres; Fernanda Montenegro; Selton Mello; Valentina Herszage, Luiza Kosovski, Barbara Luz, Guilherme Silveira and Cora Ramalho, Olivia Torres, Antonio Saboia, Marjorie Estiano, Maria Manoella and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha.

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