Still Alice

At the beginning of Still Alice, Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is in the middle of celebrating her 50th birthday.  She is surrounded by her loving family, including her husband (Alec Baldwin) and two of her adult children, Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Tom (Hunter Parrish).  Her third child, Lydia (Kristen Stewart) is off in Los Angeles, pursuing a career as an actress.  As for Alice herself, she is a linguistics professor at Columbia University, is respected in her field, and travels the country giving lectures at different campuses.

But lately, there have been subtle but noticeable changes in Alice's behavior.  She forgets things, or can't think of a certain word when she is talking.  And when she goes out jogging, she gets lost and can't even remember where she is.  She fears it may be the early signs of a brain tumor, so she goes to see a neurologist.  After a series of tests, the neurologist concludes that she is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's.  Not only that, it turns out that the Alzheimer's is genetic.  Her father had it late in his life, and there's a chance that her children could be positive as well.  The movie that follows is not so much about Alice succumbing to the disease, rather it is about her trying to hold on to her memories and her identity as long as she can before the disease takes them away from her.

Based on the novel by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is certainly a heartbreaking film, but it is not the sentimental or manipulative tearjerker it could have been in the wrong hands.  While the movie hits some pretty predictable story beats, the writing and directing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland decide to focus on Alice and her family, and make them the point of focus.  That makes it all the more cruel when Alice's mental condition slowly begins to deteriorate during the course of the film.  The movie may have a predetermined outcome, but it is the journey that these characters take that keep us riveted.  Alice is written as an intelligent woman who realizes with fear that she is going to lose everything.  In one of the film's sadder moments, she tells her husband she wishes she had cancer instead.  People wear pink ribbons, and raise money to find a cure and hope.  With Alzheimer's, there is nothing for Alice to do but wait to deteriorate, and let her family watch.

At the center of it all is Julianne Moore's Oscar-winning performance.  Moore has long been one of our most natural and gifted actresses, but lately has been wallowing in genre efforts beneath her ability like Seventh Son, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Non-Stop and Carrie.  As Alice, she gets to deliver one of her better performances in a while.  I don't know how she accomplished it, but you can actually see the light and life drain from her eyes during the course of the film, as the disease takes hold of her.  She creates a character who has a lot of pride, and is afraid of losing it as Alzheimer's grips her.  At one point, she claims she forgot about a dinner date with friends, because she was out for a run and stopped at an ice cream store.  She blames her illness for forgetting, but we also suspect that Alice herself is humiliated by her own problem, and doesn't want to be seen in front of friends, less she slip up in conversation or forget something. 

Moore does a fantastic job playing all the different sides of her complex character.  She is loving, proud, and sometimes she pries a little too deep into her family's personal matters.  But through it all, she is respected by her family and peers.  The movie shows not just her pain as she loses herself, but also the pain of those around her who must watch her fade away.  We can see the pain in the face of her husband when she can't find the bathroom in her own house, and winds up soiling herself, or in one of her daughters when they are having a conversation, even though Alice does not recognize her.  All of the performances here put us through the emotional wringer, especially Baldwin and Kristen Stewart, who is finally able to shed her shallow image from the Twilight films, and gives a performance of real substance here as a daughter who has been treated as kind of a black sheep of the family, but might just end up being closer to her mother than anyone realized.

Really, it is the performances that keep us involved, even if the script itself sometimes is a little too pat.  It likes to solve a lot of its problems with conveniences, and while it never seems overly forced and calculated, it is noticeable.  Also, it's insights into the disease itself are not exactly shattering.  While this is a better than expected script, it still comes dangerously close to whitewashing some of the harsher elements of its subject matter.  Still, it is never manipulative, and is is the performances that sell the film from beginning to end.  They make these people and their situation seem real, instead of dramatized.  Even if certain elements of the storytelling seem scripted instead of being drawn from life experiences, it is the honesty of the portrayals that carry us through.

What ultimately makes Still Alice work is how it understands its central dilemma.  Memories are priceless to each and every one of us, and if they are taken away, we lose ourselves as well.  This is a poignant film about falling into a sort of oblivion, and how we must fight to hold on to those memories and thoughts that make us who we are.

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