What makes you you? The experiences you have during your life form you, memories help you to not make the same mistake twice, but also help you function. Everyone knows the experience of forgetting specific details about something, feeling like its just on the tip of your tongue, without you being able to recollect it. It is a frustrating feeling, but it is unimaginable having that experience a lot.
That’s exactly what Alice (Julianne Moore) experiences. She is a successful linguist who besides teaching regularly is invited to give speeches during conferences. Language is her passion, but she notices that she’s starting to forget words. That feeling becomes worse and she decides to see a doctor, who makes a shocking conclusion: she’s got the first signs of early Alzheimer.
It is a diagnosis which doesn’t only have a lot of impact on her, but also on her family. Her husband John (Alec Baldwin) first doesn’t believe in and later is forced to make some tough decisions. When they find out the disease is hereditary as well, knowing that their children Lydia (Kristen Stewart), Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Tom (Hunter Parrish) might have it as well, this leads to a lot of tension. It changes the dynamics of the family. Because Alice knows she’ll eventually won’t be able to remember anything she makes her plans for the future, but doesn’t tell everyone around her about them. An understandable decision, which eventually leads to a tense moment.
The thing which Still Alice manages to do extremely well is show how frustrating the disease is. Julianne Moore succeeds in bringing the slow, devastating impact on her memory to life and it isn’t surprising she received an Oscar for her role.
As a viewer you get a sense of what it does to a person and makes you question how you would react yourself. I wondered if I would still want to live if I wouldn’t recognise anyone anymore and can’t communicate as well anymore with the people around me. It is a difficult decision that comes with this disease which you initially can’t identify easily. I hope that scientific research will bring a solution for this in the near future.
Overall, I found this pretty forgettable (ironically, haha), but the acting by everyone involved was very good, especially Julianne Moore, of course, but also Stewart and Bosworth. There were some devastating moments here, but overall, not nearly as good as it could’ve been.
Yeah? I moved me more than it did you then…