Review: Still Alice - Sometimes Memory Lane is a Dead End

Still Alice

Written and directed by: Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (from the novel by Lisa Genova who was also involved in the development of the script)
Starring: Julianne Moore, Kirsten Stewart, Alec Baldwin, and Stephen Kunken
Rated:  M
Running time: 99 minutes

Dementia is a problem of the aged and of our age. Most of us know someone directly or of someone who has a form of dementia. In Australia it is the 3rd leading cause of death (the second for women).It is said that Australia will have around one million people with dementia in 2050 if a cure or preventative treatment is not found. That’s frightening. While one side of the medical profession looks to find ways to keep us alive well past 100 another side tries to unravel the mysteries of diseases that could make the lives of many plus 60 year olds a misery. Not sure about you but forty years of age related illness doesn’t hold much attraction. And with Alzheimer’s there is rarely any ‘coming back’, barely a hint of redemption and not much opportunity for ‘handling it well’. It’s a total bastard of a thing.

Sadly more and more ‘younger’ people are also contracting Alzheimer’s and ‘Still Alice’ tells us the story of Alice, a 50 year old Columbia University linguistics professor, her diagnosis of familial early onset Alzheimer’s and its progressive hold on her. Imagine when words, the art of communication is taken from a linguistics professor…

So called affliction dramas can be cloying, overly sentimental often mawkish and over-ripe but 'Still Alice' seems to go in completely the opposite direction. We feel as though a mundane family story is

being played out, it's done cleanly, pristine almost, nothing murky or messy when gradually the underlying tragedy takes hold and something stirs in us. Actually it slowly ensnares us into wondering about the slow loss of memory, the fearful idea of losing the self or at least the self which we have built for ourselves; not recognising our child or repeating words within minutes of having previously said it. This all draws us nicely into the intent of, the trap if you will, of this moving film -to portray the experience of the affliction from Alice's perspective rather than the carers'. And it works

Julianne Moore commands this film with a nuanced and consistent, grounded  performance. Never turning to shrillness or forced emotion the changes in her are demonstrated through body movements, facial expressions and simple acting skills. No meltdown required. Ms Moore is not always so restrained or ‘natural’ in her performances, in fact one of her ‘specialties’ is often the hysterical, conflicted or angry but this time she is without affectation or archness at all. Remarkable and wondrous.

I am not a fan of Kristen Stewart and frankly that has to do with her public persona (sulky, sullen, entitled) rather than her acting. I can well and truly take my prejudice back in a box and say her performance of the wannabe actor daughter is spot on, incisive and truthful, skills some of her generation can only aspire to.

Alec Baldwin has the underwritten and clumsy role of Alice’s alpha male with a heart husband. In the end though the film isn’t about him it’s about Alice and he allows the story and the development of the plot to move along without diversion so he achieved something that the script maybe could have delivered better.

I also want to commend Stephen Kunken in the role of Alice’s neurologist (gerontologist?)Dr Benjamin. He is so right in the role that I felt as though they might have dragged a real neuro-surgeon in to give the role extra authenticity.  Although he was the bearer of bad news mostly I enjoyed his scenes.

There are two ‘moments’ in the film which stand out for me, and trust me I filled my quota of shed tears in this film. The first moment has Alice in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror and is slathering her face with cream, piling it on until her face disappears. When those magic words are being taken by that fading brain it feels as though her beautiful face has to be disappeared too or is it to hide the face of an ever present stranger? In the end maybe the face in the mirror has never been us and someone with Alzheimer’s gets that realization before the rest of us do. 

The other moment, and frankly it nearly did me in is when Alice, having made her condition public, reads a speech to a room full of researchers, crossing off each sentence with a yellow highlighter so that she won't read it again. We breathe a little slower as we wait for her to get through it but she fumbles and drops her papers on the floor, the audience in the film and those of us watching it gasp. The end of her speech has her acknowledging the irony and sadness of having made a life around communication and losing the gift of words. Crushing. Cruel.

One review I heard suggested the film was 'unrelentingly depressing', another that the 'intensity was stifling, too too much'. Not my perception I have to say. It is, to be sure, sad at times and the inevitability is upsetting. The intensity is a reflection of the focus of Moore's performance rather than anything negative about the film itself. There are lessons for actors and filmmakers in this film. There is no finality about the ending and I'm  not entirely satisfied with how it finished up, no raging at the dying of the light but also no sad reflection on the horror end days. She is, as the credits role, 'Still Alice'.

Probably the point. I liked this film a lot, particularly the central performance of Julianne Moore.

4 out of 5