Still Alice

STILL ALICE

Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland

2015 Academy Award Winner. Best Actress - Julianne Moore

Review By Allison O'Donoghue

I don’t often cry at the movies, but I shed a few tears while watching Still Alice. A testament to the brilliant Oscar worthy performance of Julianne Moore, who has swooped practically every local and international award on offer.

Still Alice is not a saccharinely sweet film, nor does it deliberately tug at your heartstrings. I hate being manipulated or dictated to – now cry, now laugh, now become enraged! Still Alice doesn’t play with your emotions or tell you how you should feel, it simply tells the story of a young women diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, without histrionics or sentimentality but is nonetheless heartbreakingly tragic.

Fifty-year-old Alice Howland is a successful Professor of linguistics and communications at Columbia University, NYC who has written books, lectured all over the world, and is highly regarded and respected amongst her peers. Her quick demise into a foggy blur of forgetfulness is shocking in its ferociousness, and rocks her orderly happy world and tailspins her immediate family.

The film starts with the family gathering at a swanky restaurant to celebrate Alice’s 50^th birthday. Surrounded by her loved ones, we're introduced to her husband John (Alec Baldwin), eldest daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth) and only son Tom (Hunter Parrish). Wayward daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart) is in Los Angeles pursuing an acting career, unable to attend the night’s festivities, but she’s mentioned a few times, so we know she exists.

At first the signs aren’t that obvious. We all do it from time to time, walk into a room and forget why we’re there, retrace our steps in an effort to fire up the neuron or wait until we remember again. Or forget someone’s name, or can’t name an object but recognise what it is, which is frustrating at the best of times, but scary if it keeps on happening. Alice has those ordinary lapses in memory that are easily dismissed or justified: lack of sleep, too much wine the night before, stress, too busy to remember everything etc but when it keeps occurring, and at times when she can least afford it, while lecturing or giving a speech, she consults at neurologist. He asks her a series of questions, asks her to remember a specific name and address, which he get’s her to recall at the end of their session, he shows her some cue cards and takes her blood for testing.

Understandably, she doesn’t tell anyone at first, but after discovering it was genetically inherited from her father and that her children my also carry the gene; she has no choice but to tell them. Anna tests positive but thankfully her twins (in utero) test negative, as does Tom, however, Lydia decides she doesn’t want to know.

Lydia is the problem middle child who has chosen an unstable acting career, and refuses to get a college education, which understandably troubles her highly, accomplished academic parents who periodically argue about her future but reluctantly fund her acting career. Alice even uses her illness as a guilt trip to encourage her to get an education to fall-back-on but Lydia doesn’t budge.  

Alice has a very busy life, is highly driven, psychically healthy and has been a beckon of feminie individuality, success and inspiration for her daughters. While she is still relatively well she sets herself little word tests, plays words-with-friends and asks herself a series of questions that she writes up daily on her phone. She records a digital message to herself to be opened when she can no longer answer these questions with step-by-step instructions of what she needs to do next, which I’m not going to tell you, you’ll just have to watch the film. Her quick demise is all the more tragic when the signs become too obvious to ignore, and shatters everyone connected to her. When her lectures become more and more erratic, she discloses her condition to her superior and as a consequence she loses her job and is reduced to staying at home.

Husband John, also an academic, gets a job offer in Minnesota and he wants to take it but this throws Alice into chaos, as everything familiar to her is in NYC. He needs to keep working to pay for her care, and is in a bit of denial. He's supportive of Alice and does everything he can to accommodate her illness, but realistically he struggles to accept that his wife of 25 years is becoming increasingly unrecognisable, while watching her brilliant mind vanish before his very eyes is unbearable for him. He wants to stay and help but wants to run away as well.  Enter the wayward Lydia, who returns from Los Angeles to look after her mother, while John moves to Minnesota and commutes back on weekends.  Alec Baldwin gives one of his best performances in years. He’s fabulous as the baffled husband wishing this would all just go away, longing for their normal life back again. It’s not going to happen. It’s not a dream.

Julianne Moore deserves every award she has won for Still Alice. I have been a fan since her stellar turn in Boogie Nights and have watched most of her films. She is consistently good, even in the mediocre films she always shines. In Still Alice her performance is restrained and measured. Her physical transformation from a strong, healthy, highly intelligent capable woman to a fragile, confused, shell of her former self is simply outstanding.

Lisa Genova’s 2007 best selling novel of the same name, shed light on a hidden shameful problem. And I’m sure she is thrilled with the success of the film and especially the magnificent performance of Julianne Moore. At one point in the film Alice wishes she had cancer instead because -  “there are support systems in place and its not so stigmatised.” And she’s right. There are people out there coping with early onset Alzheimer’s that don’t get the acknowledgment, help or funding they and their families need and deserve. Hopefully this beautifully directed film would shed light on this stigmatised disease to further fund research and find a cure.   

A must see film.