Reflections on life under authoritarianism: I’m Still Here (2024)

 

“Of all the forms of murder, none is more monstrous than that committed by a state against its own citizens. And of all murder victims, those of the state are the most helpless and vulnerable since the very entity to which they have entrusted their lives and safety becomes their killer. When the state murders, the crime is planned by powerful men. They use the same cold rationality and administrative efficiency that they might bring to the decision to wage a campaign to eradicate a particularly obnoxious agricultural pest…[S]tates that have chosen to murder their own citizens can usually count their victims by the carload lot. As for motive, the state has no peers, for it will kill its victims for a careless word, a fleeting thought, or even a poem.” - Clyde Snow in Witnesses from the Grave, p. 217

In my lifetime, I’m guessing that the number of  mass executions by order of various states numbers in the dozens. This includes the disappeared and executed in Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, and other countries across Latin America, often with the assistance of, if not the blessing of, the United States. This included the genocides of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Serbs, and Tutsis, among others, while the rest of the world has very often mounted public support for the oppressed, but nations that could have intervened did little or nothing. This includes the on-going genocides of Palestinians and Rohingya, and war crimes perpetrated by armed forces across the world, and especially, by the United States. Why do I single the U.S. out? Because of the utter hypocrisy of what we have done as opposed to what we say. 

It isn’t valid to enjoin performative whataboutism when it comes to the violence perpetrated on other people either directly by our troops or at the behest of our various presidents. Hiding behind patriotism and “my country right or wrong” has led us to this very moment when cynical, criminal tinhorn despots now rule the country. I disagree with Samuel Johnson; patriotism is often the first refuge of a scoundrel.

I’m Not Here, the highly lauded film tracing the life of Eunice Paiva from 1970 when her husband was disappeared by the regime is remarkably timely and should serve as a warning of what life under a dictatorship is like. What follows may be less a review than unwanted polemic, but this is a film of ideas, as much as a biography or a remarkable woman. Anyone watching the film without knowing the background won’t be lost; Walter Salles has directed a compelling, chilling, and triumphant cinematic masterpiece, anchored in one of the finest performance by an actress in any Academy Awards year. Fernanda Torres embodies Eunice Paiva the equal to anything a Streep or a Deniro has done. It’s a towering performance, human, vulnerable, and defiant. 

Salles’s film presents us with two films because he is addressing two realities. The one movie follows Rubens Paiva through his daily life occasionally taken away by the odd phone call here, but otherwise, the days pass by without incident, though news reports and warnings abound not to be. In the wrong place at the wrong time. The similarities between this and The Seed of the Sacred Fig are telling. Life under authoritarianism is. the same wherever it takes place. It isn’t long before Rubens is spirited away by dour men who promise his return soon. And it’s not long thereafter when Eunice and her eldest daughter Veroca are later interrogated. This is when the film bifurcates.

The Paivas daily life takes center stage and while efforts to discover what has become of Rubens remain inconclusive, it is assumed he is dead. As the film shifts focus to Eunice, she shows a steel will in simply living her life and maintaining a sense of normalcy for her. children. I won’t go into detail because there is no way to do justice to her story.

When she shouts a couple of goons in a car that has been surveilling the family, you hope you would brave enough to do the same. Mostly, though, it’s the utter defiance of continuing to live.and maintain some interiority, some private life in the face of an oppressive government that may be the best revenge or the greatest act of defiance. 

In On Tyranny, in the chapter “Establish a private life”, Timothy Snyder writes, “Whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.” (Snyder, p. 88) Eunice refuses to let this happen. If the Paivas goings are circumscribed, she ensures that she’s going to keep her children safe. As funds dwindle, she sells land set aside for a family dream house and the one they live. In in Rio de Janeiro. The kids don’t like it, but she moves the family back to Sao Paulo where life may be a bit easier, and she states that she is going back to college. 

It would be one thing if I’m Still Here was just a well-done procedural, or even an Oscar-baiting biopic. Wile it is a biopic, it isn’t “Oscar. bait” in the usual sense, though it received a Best Actress nomination for Torres and took the statue for Best International Film. There is an almost documentary feel to certain moments of the film; but then, the intimacy is so true, and the performances so solid, you’re on the edge of your seat for everyone’s fate. 

And for some of us, we might feel that we’re being shown a way for conducting life under a current authoritarian who today moved to lean on universities to squelch protest and dissent. We are not so very far from a full-on dictatorship and I’m Still Here resonates with an unnerving prescience.

Brazil, as well as the United States, may be drifting back into a dark period. Their ex-president, like our current one, lauds dictatorships and as Clorrie Yeomans points out, "The dictatorship has assumed a stark presence in the discourse of Brazil’s former president and former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro. The authoritarian right-wing populist glorifies the dictatorship, declaring that the anniversary of the 1964 coup should be ‘a day of great liberty’ (Della Coletta, 2020) and ‘the second date of independence of our Brazil’ (Mergulhão; Castro, 2021).” (Yeomans, p. 2)

Brazil’s current president is unlikely to follow suit, but there are echoes of suppressing dissent in his presidency that bear watching. On the other hand, we in the United States are facing threats across the board from the erosion of the social safety net.to suppression of the media, either through being denied entry to coverage of the White House or direct threats against various platforms. It is also difficult to ignore  the label of “fake news” that has been lobbed incessantly for a decade by the incumbent president.

If this reads less as a movie review and somewhat out of place on this platform, I somewhat agree. Mostly, though, I want to emphasize that as a film, I’m Still Here brings into crystal clear view how to conduct a life under a totalitarian regime, how living normally while aware of the bombs and traps a regime lays for its citizens. Rubens Paiva was disappeared and murdered for.attempting to help out young people putting their lives on the line. He had been a congressman who returned to exile and while aware of the risks, may have also assumed he and his family would escape notice.

That wasn’t the case. It isn’t helpful to say that the U.S. and Brazil are very different countries with vary different histories. The ascension of oligarchs to power, of fascists, and tyrants of all stripes to power, however we characterize them is more of the moment than similarities in historical antecedent.

Sources

Joyce, Christopher and Stover, Eric. Witnesses from the Grave: the Stories that Bones Tell. Little, Brown and Company. Boston, Toronto, London. 1991.

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown Publishing. New York. 2017.

Yeomans, Clorrie. The Influence of the Memory of the 1964-1985 Dictatorship on Brazilian Democratic Politics. Latin American Human Rights Studies, v. 2 (2022), Federal University of Goias, Brazil. 31 December 2022.