Still Alice

Review By: John Delia

One of the most heartfelt films of 2014 is Still Alice, which opens wide this weekend. Having lived with the debilitating forces of Alzheimer’s within my family, I can say it’s a very realistic depiction. The film has an excellent director with a crew and cast that is perfectly lead by Julianne Moore in the title role. It’s a must see film for those who are living with a loved one who may have the illness, interested adults and moviegoers that want a good cry.

The film opens introducing Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) with husband John (Alec Baldwin) and her three children Charlie (Shane McRae), Tom an ER Doctor (Hunter Parrish) and Anna (Kate Bosworth) at a restaurant for her 50th birthday. John makes a toast “to the most beautiful and intelligent woman I’ve ever known in my entire life”. The following day Alice, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University and author, gives a lecture at UCLA. During her presentation on how children learn to speak early without formal education and how memory and computation is part of speaking, Alice pauses having a lapse in memory. After returning from LA she takes her morning run around The Columbia University campus.  She suddenly stops feeling lost and afraid.  It triggers a visit to a neurologist.

The film shows the progression of Alzheimer Disease, her dealing with it and the effect it has on people all around her. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland move the story along at a fast pace identifying Alice has the disease and then going through the steps of trying to continue her everyday life. Still Alice takes a dissimilar tack than those films that have previously been presented on the subject. This one involves an early onset of the disease and the effect on her children. Very tasteful and not maudlin, Glatzer and Westmoreland pull no punches when it comes to creating a tell all.

Julianne Moore gives an amazing performance taking on the woman who gets forgetful, repetitive and suddenly losing all she built up to make her life perfect. She shows the slow breakdown of what she once was and her performance pulls the necessary reactions from the characters in the rest of the cast. As of this past Sunday for Still Alice Moore received a Golden Globe Award for Lead Actress in a Motion Picture- Drama and a Best Actress nomination for an Oscar. Certainly worthy of the award and nomination, her appearance as the challenging character of Alice is stunning, disheartening and genuine.

Still Alice has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for mature thematic material, and brief language including a sexual reference. While some scenes are very disturbing as Alice’s mind starts to fade, witnessing the process points out how important it is to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. There have been as many as 5 million cases of the disease reported in the United States. Be cautious when deciding to allow immature children see the film as it does have some scenes that may be unsettling for adolescents.

FINAL ANALYSIS: A very realistic story involving a debilitating disease. (A)