Still Alice.

                                          Still Alice. Film Review.

"The art of losing isn't hard to master. So many things seem filled with the intent that their loss is no disaster."

If we are defined by our intelligence, our language and articulation, then just imagine what it would be like to lose them all.  Julianne Moore, a versatile performer, dubbed the Queen of realism, won an Academy Award in 2015 for her portrayal of Alice Howland, the 50 year old linguistics' Professor from Columbia University, diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, a rare familial type that meant her children stood a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene.

Recently we have seen a surge in films showing cancer victims as well as Alzheimer victims. Take for instance "The Fault in Our Stars" or "50/50" even "The Notebook" and "Away From Her." Then, of course there's John Bayley's sad account of how Alzheimer's claimed his wife, the famous writer Iris Murdoch in the film "Iris." Bayley gave a brutally frank description of what it was like being married to someone with this disease. It is "like being chained to a corpse." Superficially these films are seen as being similar.

But "Still Alice" differs in that the main character is depicted as a fully-formed person right from the start and well-educated, before the disease brutally destroys her intellect, her memories and her ability to use language for communication. As the sufferer, it is Alice who is at the centre of it, helplessly watched by her family. The film begins deceptively with a 50th birthday celebration for Alice with everyone oblivious to the tragedy that will unfold before their eyes. It seems to be a happy occasion, a united family celebrating a birthday. Husband John, a physician (Alec Baldwin: Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, Blue Jasmine, Rock of Ages fame). Son Tom (Hunter Parrish), daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth) and husband, Charlie (Shane McRae). The only absence is Alice's youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart The Twilight Saga).

The film is based on Lisa Genova's debut novel. It was meant to be a small Indie film, a "little" independent project on a small budget of 4 million dollars and it took three and a half weeks to make. Alzheimer's has become the most feared disease of the 21st century so it’s not surprising that this film took centre stage and attracted lots of interest. Its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival received critical acclaim, particularly from Moore’s performance, her “sheer precision and delicacy.” (Collin/The Telegraph.)  Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia which causes memory loss, difficulty with thinking and language. It usually affects the over 65s, although people as young as 50 can develop the symptoms. For Alice, being diagnosed at 50 means it is seen as early onset Alzheimer's.

“We become ridiculous, incapable, comic, dependent, struggling to communicate or understand.” There is a sudden regression into helplessness. Behaviour turns strange, sentences become fumbled and people’s perceptions of sufferers will change.

Memory lapses whilst giving a lecture make Alice anxious. She loses her grip temporarily, trying to search for the word “lexicon,” a word familiar to her. Following on, she goes out jogging around the campus and becomes lost and confused. She stops and we see panic in her face. The camera rotates around her, encircling her. She is breathless, then loses focus and the image becomes blurred. She then stoops, takes a few deep breaths. We then see her at home, feeling despondent and exhausted. At Christmas she welcomes her son Tom’s girlfriend Christine twice. Nothing serious but these incidents do represent tell-tale signs that something isn’t quite right. She tells John: “It feels like my brain is f…ing dying. And everything in my life I have worked for is going.”

Alice believes she has a brain tumour and visits a neurologist, Travis Benjamin who suggests doing an MRI followed by a PET scan. The scans show evidence of sporadic memory impairment caused by early onset Alzheimer’s. Alice is naturally devastated, wishing that she had cancer instead reminding us that people wear pink ribbons and raise money to show solidarity. What do they do for Alzheimer’s? “There’s a tremendous amount of shame around the disease and people feel like they’re not seen, they feel isolated.” (Julianne Moore.)

To take some control over her mind whilst she can, she types a number of questions and answers into her phone such as her eldest daughter’s name and the month of her birthday. She consults this every day and keeps lists in her kitchen to memorize. Sadly, she records a message on her laptop, filed under Butterfly for when her condition becomes so severe and she instructs herself to take an overdose and end it. From time to time we see images of her late sister and mother who were killed in a car crash in 1972 when Alice was 18 years of age. They always seem happy, walking or playing on the beach.

The film shows us Alice’s decline from forgetfulness to total destruction of her memory and intelligence. This absence and vacancy is what she referred to as hell and worse than that at the conference where she was invited to talk about her illness. The film successfully shows her pitiful decline without plunging us into flat despair. It is an emotional journey for us too but not as pitilessly harrowing as Michael Hanebe’s “Amour.” You’ll enjoy the intensity of this journey and hopefully learn to appreciate the simple things in life.

“Because nothing is lost for ever. In this world there is a kind of painful progress. A longing for what we’ve left behind. And dreaming about.” Alice is still Alice in spite of this cruel illness. Her legacy lives on in her family. Believability.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2016. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.