How “Mixed Feelings” About ‘On The Road’ and Jia Zhangke Doc Led Walter Salles To Make ‘I’m Still Here’ 

The experience of adapting Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel “On The Road” in 2012 led Walter Salles to learn a valuable lesson: “Admiring something that fascinates you is not enough to adapt the work.” Speaking at the Marrakech International Film Festival, the Brazilian director said he nurtures “mixed feelings” about the adaptation and that making the 2016 doc “Walter Salles on Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang” about the Chinese director led him to “find faith in cinema again.” 

“I have very pleasant and rich memories of working with great actors like Viggo Mortensen, who were fascinating artists who touched me,” he continued of his experience of making “On The Road.” ”On the other hand, I learned there must be something visceral for you to dare do something. After ‘On the Road,’ I was much more careful with this personal listening, which is what made me do this documentary about Jia Zhangke, a director who I learned so much from.”

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After making the 2016 doc, Salles returned to his home country in search of a next project but felt that what he was describing in his scripts “wasn’t as crazy as what was going on in Brazil,” referring to the political turmoil that extended from the 2014 unlawful impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff to the election of right-wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. 

“History was going faster than my imagination,” he added. “Music can respond to the present moment. In filmmaking, you always have to anticipate things because it’s a much slower process. If you want to touch the zeitgeist of your country you have to anticipate it.”

And anticipate is what Salles did with “I’m Still Here.” The drama, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s eponymous book, tells the story of the disappearance and subsequent murder of former congressman Rubens Paiva at the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship. The film, which premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival, is one of the highlights of the upcoming award season, with its lead, Fernanda Torres, also garnering praise for her powerhouse central performance.

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“Brazilian cinema had four years of silence because of the pandemic,” said the director. “Brazil was the country where most people died of COVID because of a government that didn’t believe in vaccines and killed people because of that. One of the biggest destructions caused by this government was the cultural sector, which was completely ruined. Kleber Mendonça Filho made a beautiful film, ‘Pictures of Ghosts,’ which made us not lose faith and understand that cinema can be born again.”

Commenting on the making of his latest film, Salles emphasised how “dictatorship even modifies the language.” “People cannot say what they usually say, they cannot ask questions anymore, relationships become much more subjective, they have to try and guess what is going on in each other’s eyes, they cannot ask questions, so it completely changes the narrative of the film,” said the filmmaker.

Elsewhere, Salles recalled working with one of the greatest Brazilian actresses of all time, Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro, in 1998’s “Central Station.” Montenegro would become the first-ever Brazilian actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the film and has a brief appearance at the end of “I’m Still Here.”

“She comes from the theatre and has a great approach to her work,” he said. “She traveled across the country with incredible plays and her daughter was born on stage in a way. I wrote ‘Central Station’ for her because I really wanted us to collaborate. I had previously written two scripts that were not good enough for her and with ‘Central Station’ we finally found a film that allowed her to show and share all her talent.”

“I’m Still Here” is currently leading the box office in Brazil almost a month after it first opened in the country. Of the success of the film in his native country, Salles said that what is truly interesting in Brazil is “a return to the collectiveness of cinema.” 

“Different generations have elected to watch the film in cinemas together and they are staying until after the end of the credits because they want to discuss the film. It’s a gift because it is what ultimately led us to cinema, this generation and mine, we all wanted to be part of a collective experience that could never be reproduced,” he added, saying that one of the “beautiful” things happening in the country is that “people are writing on social media about what happened in their specific screenings, moments where people applaud, laugh, cry, ask questions… These are people who have never met each other but they are experiencing something together.”

He concluded by quipping that it feels “great” to be ahead of blockbusters like “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” but that comes second to the joys of the “collectiveness of the experience.”