Alzheimer’s, in my opinion, is the worst disease imaginable. The person you once knew ceases to exist, slowly becoming a dependent shell of a human being. Julianne Moore gives the performance of her career as Alice, the title character whom see created and slowly erased. This first person perspective gives us a heartbreaking point of view to the cessation of a person not involving death.
Alice (Moore) is a quite successful linguistics professor at Colombia University in New York. She is happily married to John (Alec Baldwin) and has 3 kids: successful type-A Anna (Kate Bosworth), timid Tom (Hunter Parrish), and LA problem child Lydia (Kristen Stewart). Alice gets diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, causing rifts at her job, and changes to her relationships with her family.
This is one of the few Alzheimer’s movies shot from the perspective of the one with the disease (lots of foggy camera shots and time jumps). Julianne Moore is amazing at conveying the slow loss of Alice’s identity. Alzheimer’s is slow acting; Moore nails the early brush offs, making it seem like she just lost her train of thought. As these little moments become more severe, we see two versions of Alice appearing: one with memories and one without them. Moore captures the fear and despair at being in your own house and not knowing where you are, and the fight against nature’s course to keep yourself cognizant. By 2/3 of the way through the film, we are never sure which version of Alice we are getting, but start betting on the shell, which Moore plays as empty, like a robot. It’s Moore’s terrific piece of acting that keeps Still Alice a realistic tale about a terrible disease.
Mixed success goes to Alice’s support system. Kristen Stewart fares the best; for normal Alice, she is a free spirit with no sense of direction. For patient Alice, Stewart is a caring considerate daughter, understanding her mom’s need to be treated as a person, compared to Kate Bosworth’s driven but clueless personality. Stewart and Moore’s scenes are Still Alice’s strongest, as the two become closer while Alice gets sicker. Alec Baldwin and Hunter Parrish don’t have enough to do, and are too unformed to leave a great impression.
Watching Still Alice is a gut-wrenching experience if you have a family member suffering from memory loss. Julianne Moore’s stellar performance captures the all encompassing tornado that is Alzheimer’s disease. My heart goes out to all of those poor souls who work through this on a day to day basis. I hope the world throws you a cure sometime soon.