Review

Culture

Film & TV

Freedom

20 March 2025

6 min read

I’m Still Here is a celebration of Brazilian resilience

The Brazilian Oscar winner is an act of remembrance.

Matt Lewis

Matt is a songwriter and musician, currently completing an MA in theology at Trinity College, Bristol.

A woman, wearing 70s clothing, stands, looking apprehensive.

Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva.

The other week in Brazil, crowds were heard jubilantly celebrating: “Brazil! Brazil!” The characteristically enthusiastic nature of their celebration might make you think there had been a football victory. But the victory was in fact the Oscar win for I’m Still Here, the Walter Salles directed movie – a first time win for Brazil in Best International Picture. And Brazil should be proud. As the credits rolled in an independent cinema, I sat in stunned silence. I’m Still Here is a moving and expertly crafted portrayal of family life under tyranny. The film gives a tragic account of the insidious and destructive nature of authoritarian untruth - yet also a celebration of the defiant resistance of unsung heroes in the face of evil.

Set in 1970’s Rio de Janeiro during a military dictatorship that lasted for 21 years, the film centres around the true story of the Paiva family. The father, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former dissident congressman, is abducted by the military for interrogation and disappears; the mother, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), who herself is imprisoned and tortured for 12 days, is left to keep the family together and continue the search for her husband.

At this point, I should admit that this review is not unbiased, as I have been to Brazil six times, and have an enthusiastic interest in its history and culture. And despite the sombre tone at the heart of the movie, I’m Still Here felt like a celebration of Brazil. The film opens with an ominous helicopter flying over a Rio beach, which leads us to the Paiva family enjoying the sun with their friends. The fun, vibrancy, and warmth that permeates the family gathering reminded me of much of what I love about Brazilian culture. Even in the midst of a repressive regime, at least for this family, the party goes on.

Unfortunately, the party doesn’t last for long.

Thirty minutes into the film, the relative harmony of the Paiva family’s world is sharply interrupted, when the military police arrive at their home and announce that Rubens is wanted for interrogation. As the intruders close the curtains and doors, the light, warmth and music that permeated the start of the movie are muffled and suffocated. This scene plays like a microcosm for Brazilian society under authoritarian regime.

Historians Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa Starling, in their book Brazil: A Biography document how on 14 December 1968, the Jornal do Brasil, a leading daily newspaper, published a special edition to surprise their readers, including a false weather report: ‘Suffocating temperature. Air unbreathable.’ The previous day, the military dictatorship had announced a law which suspended habeas corpus and freedom of expression, permitted the annulment of citizen’s rights, and determined that political trials would be conducted by military courts, with no right of appeal. This allowed the dictatorship to repress political dissent, and led to the mass disappearances of individuals suspected of anti-government activity.

We see this suffocation slowly take hold of Eunice Paiva. Here Fernanda Torres’ subtle yet arresting performance as the Paiva mother cannot be understated. As she tries to maintain a sense of normalcy in her family, protecting them from the truth, while also quietly and defiantly seeking her husband’s release, we hang on to her every word and nuance of expression.

Every confrontation she makes to the police is met with deflection, lies, and cover-up. We watch as the insidiously persuasive untruth of authoritarianism seems to triumph over integrity. We get this sense from the world around the Paiva family too – the radio only relays state-sanctioned news, and censors music deemed subversive. I’m reminded of George Orwell’s depiction of the Party in 1984, which enforces ‘doublethink’ on the populace: ‘to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies … consciously to induce unconsciousness.’

Eunice can be seen as a counterpart to Orwell’s protagonist, Winston, who claimed ‘There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.’ This refusal to let go of truth carries Eunice Paiva, and us along with her.

While a song won’t take down a dictatorship overnight, it can get into your head, and stick there long enough to inspire some forms of resistance.

The presence of music in the movie likewise represents a significant thread of resistance to the regime’s propaganda and shrouded crimes. This is heard not just in the vibrant soundtrack of resistance music from the period, but also in the dark and hostile prison where Eunice Paiva is held. Amid screams from other inmates, Eunice hears a man sing out from another cell:

Samba:

Black,

strong, fearless,

Was harshly persecuted

On the corner, in the bar, in the yard.

He is quickly silenced by a guard, but the refrain memorialises the cry of the oppressed. While a song won’t take down a dictatorship overnight, it can get into your head, and stick there long enough to inspire some forms of resistance, to combat the ‘official’ narrative of events with a subversive counter-narrative.

Yet in I’m Still Here, the clearest act of resistance comes from the quiet but resolved determination of Eunice Paiva in her refusal to forget her husband, to let the untruth of dictatorship have the final say. I’m reminded of Hannah Arendt’s diagnosis of the ‘banality of evil’ in Nazi Germany. Under dictatorship, with the state’s obfuscatory erasure of its misdeeds, evil becomes normalised, losing its shock, its horror. In this way, atrocities can continue to be committed with impunity.

But Eunice Paiva’s story reminds us, in Schwarz and Starling’s words: ‘nothing can be completely extinguished, and no one disappears completely without someone remembering their name.' As Chico Buarque, a Brazilian musician foresaw:

The banal of today

Will be in journals someday.

One aspect of Eunice’s story the film does not portray is her faith. According to her children, she would attend Catholic Mass every week, partaking of bread and wine to remember Christ’s death. I’m curious what influence this continued reminder of the crucifixion of Jesus had on her.

There are other examples of resistance in Brazil that were explicitly motivated by the image of the cross. Schwarz and Starling recount the opposition of a group of Catholic bishops who used the Church’s communication channels to disclose internationally what was happening in Brazil. One Catholic father, who was personal assistant to the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, working on international human rights, was kidnapped, tortured and killed.

In 1970 the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church in Paris displayed a handcuffed Christ on the altar with a tube in his mouth and a magneto (small generator for applying electric shocks) on the top of the Cross. Above the Cross the words from the Brazilian flag ‘Ordem e Progresso’ were inscribed.

While we can see the strong parallels between Jesus’ death at the hands of Roman imperial oppressors and the unjust torture of thousands under military dictatorship, the message of the Cross goes even deeper than this.

The Cross has been throughout centuries a revelation of all of humanity’s deepest wickedness, and not only that, a confrontation of our tendency to evade accountability, to create untruths to hide atrocities, to make evil banal. Yet as Christians of different denominations commemorate the crucifixion at Holy Communion, Eucharist, Mass, we are reminded of a God who suffers for the sins of the world. Perhaps this meal nourished Eunice Paiva in her fight against tyranny. Perhaps this memorial of a suffering saviour served as an inspiration to retain the memory of all those who suffer, to expose the evils that so often go unseen.

In any case, I’m Still Here, while giving an honest critique of Brazil’s history, ends up being a memorial - even a celebration - of the resilient, Brazilian spirit, exemplified in the lives of families like the Paivas.

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Article

Culture

Israel

Middle East

Politics

27 June 2024

7 min read

Netanyahu’s baffling ability to bounce back

Disliked and embattled, the Israeli premier’s purpose strengthens him.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

Between two generals wearing camouflage uniforms, a man in a black shirt listens.

Bibi ponders future plans.

Prime Minister's Office, Israeli Government.

Are the dreams of Bibi Netanyahu about to be crushed? As the Israeli prime minister’s coalition teeters, what is remarkable is that he has survived so long. Central to this survival is his purpose – a dream of a secure Israel. We need to unpack such leaders’ dreams and understand why they are so potent.

Langston Hughes, in his poem ‘Harlem,’ asks what ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ Several possibilities are put forward: ‘Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? And an alternative: ‘Maybe it just sags like a heavy load?’ And finally ‘Or does it explode?’

It’s possible that Hughes referred to Harlem race riots in the 1930s and 1940s, but no-one knows for sure. The question is what happens when a dream is put on hold – or worse, destroyed – in the face of struggle?

Do we press on? Do we give up? What happens if we press on, and things do not work out? Or perhaps we press on, and things do work out. Hughes’ poem encourages us to ask these questions.

Looking back, Hughes’ poem is interesting but obviously gloomy, without hope. A dream is deferred. It withers, and then vanishes. But what if a dream is – when encountering struggle – maintained, kept in tact? The dream, perhaps nearly lost, emerges in the end, stronger than it was before.

Hughes’ poem is one of struggle and eruption. Not struggle and emergence. It is a despairing poem, one that denies the possibility of resurrection from the brink of death, even if the obstacles are significant.

We all have dreams, perhaps about peace, career, family, community, love, or something else. Inevitably, these dreams are – as dreams always are, in order to test our faith - met with opposition.

In these moments, we have two options: we can believe in what we see – the dream faltering, withering on the vine, ever so slowly. Or we can believe in the unseen, in which the dream re-emerges from whatever resistance it encounters. The former values the material, what we can actually see. The second values and trusts in what we cannot see. This brings us back to the point of faith.

'I have lost count of how many political obituaries I have written about Netanyahu — and how many resurrection stories.’

Nicholas Goldberg

The ability to struggle and emerge, in which death or near-death is followed by resurrection, is a quality that is in short supply in modern political leadership. It is easily – and not surprisingly – overlooked in a culture prone to despair and hopelessness, in which we are met with a new crisis at every corner.

But some leaders have a unique, if not baffling, quality: the ability to struggle and emerge stronger, somehow renewed. They resurrect themselves where this was thought impossible. And when they have this quality, they become unrelenting forces, whatever you might think of them.

No leader better embodies this quality in the political West than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (or ‘Bibi’ for short). Netanyahu strengthens whenever he is on the ropes, perhaps because he is on the ropes.

Although a profoundly disliked figure by many, Netanyahu’s ability to struggle and emerge merits serious study from any student of politics. It is worth asking where his ability to struggle and emerge, resurrecting oneself from the depths of despair – in seemingly impossible situations – comes from?

Ishaan Tharoor puts it well in a recent Washington Post article: ‘Yet Netanyahu is expert at defying the odds.’ However, puzzlingly few articles are written on this topic – Netanyahu’s ability to come back from seemingly impossible circumstances.

Columnist Nicholas Goldberg comes even closer to the essence of resurrection in a Los Angeles Times op-ed in 2020, in which he writes ‘Over the years, I have lost count of how many political obituaries I have written about Netanyahu — and how many resurrection stories.’ He later comments on Netanyahu’s single life mission focused on security.

Both articles are more anti-Netanyahu than they are a reflection on the why and how of his countless resurrections. So it is worth asking: what is behind this quality?

A mission is fundamental to resurrection, in which certain politicians find a way through whenever the world counts them out.

While commentators focus on the ills of Netanyahu’s tenure as Israeli Prime Minister – indictments of corruption and possible future jail time, thwarting of a two-state solution in favour of the Abraham Accords, and the security failures that contributed to the October 7 disaster – they fail to consider deeper questions related to Tharoor’s description of Netanyahu as constantly ‘defying the odds.’

Neglected in analyses on Netanyahu is the deep trauma of his brother Yonatan’s passing in the famous Operation Entebbe. Neglected is the fact that he was wounded, sometimes severely, on many occasions while fighting for the Israeli special forces. And neglected is the influence of his father Benzion, a notable academic well-known for his writing on the historical oppression of the Jewish people (and on his own later rejection by the Israeli academic community).

These are powerful, deep-seated experiences if not major traumas, which – as Israeli friends well-acquainted with Netanyahu wisely note – underpin his clear life mission of increasing Israeli security in a dangerous world.

Goldberg puts this mission, even if uncharitably, as follows in his column: ‘Netanyahu has stood for one key proposition: that peace is not to be trusted; it is a pipe dream pushed by starry-eyed doves who fell hard for the likes of Yasser Arafat. According to Netanyahu, only battening down, fighting back hard, building walls and rejecting compromise protects the country.’

Netanyahu provides us with a crucial lesson in political leadership: a clear and simple life mission provides the ability to claim victory from the jaws of defeat, even in the most seemingly intractable of circumstances. A mission is fundamental to resurrection, in which certain politicians find a way through whenever the world counts them out.

A mission – simple because it is grounded in brokenness (the death of his brother) – provides Netanyahu (and other politicians that have this quality) with a strategic and tactical advantage that cannot be replicated by opponents without similar purpose. Such mission is not fleeting but enduring, Netanyahu resisting all temptations that might thwart his single-minded purpose.

In the case of Israel, no other Israeli political leader has operated with the same sense of mission as has Netanyahu over the last two decades. For if this were the case, Netanyahu would not currently be in power.

Our focus therefore should never be on dreams deferred, as per Hughes’ poem, but rather on the realisation of our dreams – underpinned by unique and consistent life missions.

Commentators, focusing on external circumstances – the current direction of the war, certain decisions made, the opinions of well-read ‘experts’ – neglect these deeper human questions at their peril, because the answer to the question of purpose helps people find ways through where none seem to exist. Purpose, not circumstance, allows a political leader to struggle and emerge in circumstances where most others falter.

For wider context, we can here turn to the example of Jesus, whose resurrection follows his trials at Gethsemane. When Jesus prays in Gethsemane, it is not clear how he should act. Jesus does not know what God wants from him. But he knows that he must carry out the will of his Father.

He asks ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want’. Jesus is alone in his deliberation. He asks and waits, and in this waiting, the way forward is revealed. Here we see, in its most poignant form, struggle and emergence. Jesus is resurrected three days following his death, when even his disciples had counted him out.

Our focus therefore should never be on dreams deferred, as per Hughes’ poem, but rather on the realisation of our dreams – underpinned by unique and consistent life missions. Discerning these missions is not easy. If anything, there is considerable pain involved in doing so.

Yet, struggle that involves the possibility of failure of a dream, within a consistent and singular life mission, contains within it the seeds of success. The dream emerges intact from whatever short-term struggle it faces, if not strengthened.

A way is found where none previously existed, when those focused merely on the seen long counted a person out. In the long run, mission enables victory: the realisation – not deferral – of dreams.