Photo by Jojo Whilden, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: PG-13
Starring: Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin
Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland
For many, turning 50 is an occasion for anxiety, but for Alice (Julianne Moore), her 50th birthday party conveys a hint of unimagined terrors to come. Alice is a star in her profession as a respected linguistics professor at Columbia University. She has a loving marriage with her handsome and successful husband John (Alec Baldwin), and three grown children with lives full of promise. But a confused remark at the dinner table is a sign of trouble. In the next scene of Still Alice, she blanks out while giving a lecture. Alice sees a neurologist and tests positive for early onset Alzheimer’s.
Dementia of all sorts, but especially Alzheimer’s, has become an increasing concern as America’s population ages and baby boomers confront the specter of mental and emotional bankruptcy in their golden years. Alzheimer’s isn’t mere forgetfulness but a poorly understood disease that attacks the heart of who we are by eroding the bridges to our past and unraveling the web of language. The cruel irony in Still Alice is that the Alzheimer’s stricken protagonist was defined by her intelligence and articulation.
Adapting their movie from Lisa Genova’s novel, writer-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland slip an uncomfortable subject into the familiar comforter of Hollywood melodrama. They steer toward sentimentality, complete with sad violins and pensively tinkling piano. Still Alice is not as powerful as Michael Haneke’s Foreign Language Oscar winner on the same subject, Amour, but relates the struggle and heartache of an unsolvable problem to the widest possible audience.
Still Alice does some things well, including developing a believable family dynamic. But what elevates the film beyond problem potboiler is Moore’s superb and justly Oscar-nominated performance. She rises beyond the dialogue, delivering fear, anguish, resentment and resignation through her eyes, through the tightening of her face and the flustered denial of her body language when the realization of her illness sets in. Perhaps the ultimate irony in a film about the loss of language is Moore’s ability to communicate her character more deeply through gestures, postures and facial expression than the words in her script.
