Tag Archives: Walter Salles

Past Tense

I’m Still Here

by Hope Madden

Walter Salles’s beautifully understated true story I’m Still Here benefits from a powerful central performance, a poignant naturalism, and the timeless truth that dictatorships offer only cruel injustice.

Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) adapts friend Marcelo Paiva’s book, written to record the life of his iconic mother as her memories faded due to Alzheimer’s. Paiva’s mother, Eunice Paiva, is brought to life with deeply felt humanity and power by Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres.

As the film opens, Eunice floats in the ocean, her five children on Ipanema beach nearby. A military chopper breaks her peace. Her older daughters play volleyball, her younger daughter plays in the stand, her one son, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) nabs a stray puppy and, knowing that his mother would deny him the pet, runs home to convince his sweetly indulgent father, Rubens (Selton Mello).

Many films present a wholesome, loving family unit in Act 1 so that the tragedies of Act 2 hit harder. But for Salles and the onscreen Paivas, the investment in this family time grounds every moment after. There’s genuine joy, bonds between and among family members that ring true and continue to ring until the final credits roll some 137 minutes later.

In 1971, shortly after Christmas, Rubens Paiva was taken from their home by Brazil’s military dictatorship. Like thousands of other Brazilians, he was “disappeared”. The balance of I’m Still Here participates in Eunice’s struggles in his absence.

Salles and Torres sidestep sentimentality at every turn. The graceful direction and formidable central performance pull you through every day—Eunice’s own arrest, fear for her children, her inability to even access the family’s bank accounts without her husband’s signature or a death certificate, and her aching worry and fear for Rubens.

We flash forward twice: once to the day, years after Eunice Paiva’s gotten her law degree and devoted her life to social justice, that Rubens’s death certificate is finally handed to her. When asked by the press whether it made sense to focus on Brazil’s ugly past when there was so much else fighting for attention, Paiva responded clearly that it was imperative. When government criminals go unpunished, they learn that their heinous acts are acceptable.

Parallels to our current climate certainly invest I’m Still Here with a particularly nightmarish urgency.  The timeline spreads the tale too thin, but it’s done to honor Eunice Paiva, whose strength in the face of right wing dictators inspires awe.

Wait a minute – Kristen Stewart can act?

By Hope Madden

It is hard to believe Jack Kerouac’s seminal buddy adventure On the Road has not been made into a film before now. It makes sense that director Walter Salles was the filmmaker to finally tackle it, since his The Motorcycle Diaries was sort of Che Guevara’s version of the same existential, cross-continental, life-defining trip. For Road’s Sal Paradise (the author’s alter ego), though, this trip ended in the birth of America’s Beat Generation (as opposed to Latin America’s interest in Communism). But still, you know, important stuff.

Paradise (Sam Riley), of course, strikes up a bond with enigmatic wild man Dean Moriarty, played by Tron: Legacy’s Garrett Hedlund and based on Kerouac’s buddy Neal Cassady. The rest of the tale sees the author outlining the interweaving lives, intimacies and inspirations of the various Beat writers, changing their names without truly concealing their identities.

While the entire cast has big shoes to fill, Hedlund is most challenged. Moriarty/Cassady presents a larger than life character to try to portray. Both Hunter S. Thompson (in Hell’s Angels) and Charles Bukowski (in Notes of a Dirty Old Man) depicted Cassady as a tragically beautiful, untamed spirit. Take note: if Bukowski and Thompson think you are wild…you, sir, are the real deal.

Hedlund strikes a nice pose, but he hasn’t the guts to pull the character off. High energy, good looking, a little damaged, but hardly the magnetic force of nature that inspired so many writers.

Riley fares a bit better as the artistically needy Paradise, and Twilight’s Kristen Stewart surprises the shit out of everyone by doing a fine job as young sexpot Marylou.

They’re joined by a host of excellent cameos, including Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee (based on William S. Burroughs), and an especially nutty Amy Adams as his wife Jane (based on Joan Vollmer).

Salles makes the most of the cast he’s got, and his poetic way with a camera saturates the picture with a lovely, nostalgic quality. He mixes in frenetic party scenes, fluid road sequences, and enough  bongo and snare to remind us we are witnessing the birth of the beat. Still, having inspired countless other adventures, On the Road doesn’t feel too fresh, and Salles can’t uncover the vitality that fueled this landmark road trip in the first place.

He has crafted a very pretty film, competently assembled and pleasantly performed. Really, On the Road should amount to more than that.

3 stars (out of 5)