"I'm Still Here" and "A Complete Unknown"

Let's finish up the Oscar movies today.

"I'm Still Here" was a big hit in Brazil, a film about the arrest and disappearance of retired politician Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) when a fascist regime was in control of the country in the 1970s.  We initially meet Rubens and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) living with their five children near the seaside, enjoying a quiet life out of the spotlight together.  However, after increased activity by far-left radicals, Rubens is arrested.  Shortly afterwards Eunice and teenage daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are also taken into custody, and Eunice is interrogated.  

What makes "I'm Still Here" a particularly effective piece of drama is getting the audience situated with the Paiva family first.  We watch the kids play, oldest daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) preparing to go overseas, and Rubens working as a civil engineer.  The violence of the regime is only present in the background, through news broadcasts on the radio or snatches of conversations with friends.  A good amount of time passes before the police appear in the Paiva home, insisting that Rubens come with them.  And suddenly everything about the Paivas' lives is upended, with Fernanda Torres emerging as the lead of the film as Eunice tries to get answers and survive the abusive treatment of her oppressors.  The interrogation sequences are harrowing, but where the film really shines is in the aftermath, as Eunice struggles to keep her family going and maintain her resolve in her hunt for answers.    

I probably built this film up too much in my mind, because this was the hardest Best Picture nominee to actually find and watch in the runup to the Oscars, but I expected more from "I'm Still Here."  We watch terrible things happen to some good people, for apparently no good reason.  An epilogue twenty-five years later provides some closure, but no real answers.  Not knowing much about Brazilian history, and nothing about Rubens Paiva, I had to go and look up a lot of the missing context for the disappearances   after finishing the movie.  Torres's performance is very good, lovely and subtle for the most part, but I wish I could have seen more of what Eunice was up to during those twenty-five years the movie skipped over.  It feels like there was much more to the story than what we saw onscreen.

On to "A Complete Unknown," which is an interesting take on the life and career of Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet.  We get plenty of context for Dylan and his music, as "A Complete Unknown" focuses on the period from 1961 to 1965, when he moved to New York and became a part of the folk music scene.  We see him  befriend other musicians like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) making appearances.  And when Dylan's star begins to rise, we see it in relation to the careers of the other musicians in his orbit at the time.    

I don't know much about Bob Dylan aside from his most famous songs.  I like the way he's portrayed here, first as a bright young discovery that everyone wants to know, and then as an increasingly frustrated artist who can't stand being pigeonholed in the folk genre, and eventually burns several bridges to get himself out.  He's shown from the POVs of several people close to him, including his girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning), often being a monumental ass.  At no point was I able to see Chalamet as Bob Dylan, but he's charming enough and does a decent enough job with the songs, so I didn't mind.  I'm grateful that Chalamet didn't attempt to sound or behave more like the actual Dylan, which would have probably been very distracting.

The ensemble cast is great, with a magnetic Monica Barbaro leaving the biggest impression as someone I need to pay more attention to.  If you're a fan of folk music, "A Complete Unknown" almost plays like an all-star concert, with plenty of rousing musical interludes and nostalgic recreations of '60s New York.  Director James Mangold, who gave us a much more traditional biopic with "Walk the Line" twenty years ago, is very surefooted here, both building up and undercutting Dylan's image as necessary.  Though this never gets much into the biographical details, "A Complete Unknown" does an excellent job of getting across why Bob Dylan is famous, and how he fits into musical history.  And it's a good time at the movies too.    

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