For movies about terminally or debilitatingly ill
characters, you could do a lot worse than Still
Alice. Adapted and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland from
the book by Lisa Genova, it’s about a woman diagnosed with and then suffering
the consequences of early onset Alzheimer’s. She’s only fifty, still working as
a university lecturer, giving talks around the world on linguistics and
language development. She’s still physically active as a runner and involved in
her children’s lives. They are at that precarious age in between childhood and
having families of their own, chronologically adults, but still in need of
mother’s care.
It’s hard enough to deal with Alzheimer’s as an elderly
person. No one wants to think of losing their memories, their relationships,
their knowledge and abilities. But to be so young and staring at losing your
career and professional respectability or your husband who is still in the
prime of his own career and can’t necessarily devote himself to your care.
Julianne Moore is an exceptional actress. She always has been and she adds
another feather in her cap as Alice. She takes on the difficult task of playing
a woman who not only has to register lack of recognition, but also that she is
masking it in front of others. Moore is just wonderful and she doesn’t make
Alice into a sad caricature of forgetfulness.
Credit is also due to Glatzer and Westmoreland, whose
adaptation is respectful of the disease and of the audience. This is a movie
that doesn’t pander or go in for the easy and obvious emotional ploys. It’s
sort of self-evidently sad and terrifying especially a scene when Alice learns
that her eldest daughter, Anna (Kate Bosworth) tested positive for the gene
that causes the disease and so is guaranteed to go through the same.
Alec Baldwin co-stars as Alice’s husband, John, a
character as generic as his name. Baldwin is serviceable as the supportive and
loving partner and brings to the role assuredness, safety, and compassion. As her
youngest daughter, Lydia, Kristen Stewart again brings that quality of
disaffectedness. She’s the black sheep in the family, the one who has chosen
acting as her profession and moved to the west coast away from her Boston-based
family. The most developed relationship Alice has in the movie is with her. If
the script could have done something more interesting, it would have been to
flesh out all of her relationships a little more, particularly with Anna.
If Julianne Moore wins an Oscar for Still Alice, it will be the one thing that keeps this movie kicking
around for a long time to come. It’s good, but unremarkable. It’s not bad,
which it had every opportunity to be, but nor is it great. If Moore wins for
this, I guess I can feel satisfied with that. It is an excellent performance,
but the only thing that stands out in Still
Alice.
Julianne Moore is an exceptional actress. She always has been and she adds another feather in her cap as Alice.
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