We never see Alice at the height of her prowess. She is already forgetful and mildly confused as Still Alice opens. We are told that she was a brilliant college professor who wrote a textbook once, but that Alice is only a memory. Her body remains behind as the person she was fades away a little bit at a time.
The horror of Alzheimer’s is that we can’t offer the logical treatment for this disease-a cyanide capsule and a glass of water. The person who might make such a choice is gradually replaced by some other person who wants to live. Just as a young person can’t image wanting to live as an old person, someone with a sound mind can never understand how someone with a broken mind wants to keep going.
We watch as Alice sinks ever deeper into a world she can’t understand. At first she remembers being more, but soon she lives only for whatever moment she finds herself in. Time and place and people are constantly new. The film zips by at a brisk pace and in an hour and half, Alice is left incoherent and the screen fades to white.
There were a few annoying people in the story. Her Doctor is ever cheerful and always smiling as he tells Alice and her husband that she has an incurable disease that will not only destroy her life, but possibly the lives of her children as well. Alice’s husband doesn’t want to deal with Alice and does his best to pretend everything is still alright.
There are a number of odd scenes where Alice is advising her daughter, played by Kristen Stewart, to forget about this acting nonsense. There’s ever a scene from a play where Kristen gives her standard issue wooden performance, appearing to prove the point that maybe acting isn’t her thing. She mopes her way through her role as Alice’s daughter.
Julianne Moore is brilliant as usual. Especially griping was a scene where a mostly sane Alice delivers a recorded message to a mostly not sane Alice. The contrast between the two portrayals is amazing.
Still Alice is an interesting title, because she clearly isn’t Alice anymore. But then, if she isn’t Alice, who or what, is she?
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