Review // Still Alice

[projekktor id=’17386′]

Still Alice is the portrait of a middle aged woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Julianne Moore is getting a lot of praise for her lead role as Alice, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, a mother of three grown children, and the wife of an equally driven professor (Alec Baldwin). The film begins as Alice’s celebrates her 50th birthday with her family. We’re quickly introduced to her doting husband John, their med-student son Tom (Hunter Parish), their determined A-type daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Anna’s husband Charlie (Shane McRae). Missing from the event is the youngest child, Lydia (Kristen Stewart) who is off in California attempting to be an actress.

From literally fuzzy images, to confusing fast cuts and moments of clarity, the composition of the film brings the audience into Alice’s struggle.

Aside from the fact that Stewart continues her lip biting acting – lip biting is not emotion Kristen – and Bosworth, Parish and McRae are utterly forgettable the supporting players are adequate. We get a sense of each character without taking the focus off of Alice and her struggle as her memory deteriorates. I was pleasantly surprised by Baldwin who does an excellent job playing a man silently suffering the loss of his wife despite the fact that she’s still alive. It’s a subtle performance and not one I’m used to seeing from the actor. The truly stunning performance comes from Moore, granted its a meaty role. How often does an actress establish a character in the first 10 minutes of a film and then spend the next hour and half breaking her down? The truly heartbreaking aspect of the story and the disease is not her inability to remember those who are important to her or dates or recipes but that she forgets who she is along the way. Moore managed to capture Alice at her prime and maintain a thread of that character throughout the film.

Still Alice is written and directed by long time film-making partners Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland and is based on the bestselling book by Lisa Genova. Genova is a neuroscientist who often writes about characters suffering from neurological diseases and the scientific touch from the source material shines through in the film. At times Still Alice feels like a social experiment that follows a patient from diagnosis to full deterioration and chronicles the social impact. But the story is mostly told from Alice’s perspective. From literally fuzzy images, to confusing fast cuts and moments of clarity, the composition of the film brings the audience into Alice’s struggle. In fact at large the film tells a deeply personal story, of a woman who is losing everything and has no way to prevent it.

It was hard to sit through this one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well crafted film, but the subject matter is painful and it’ll get you right in the feels. Be brave, get some tissues, and watch Still Alice.

Reviewed by Vithiya Murugadas.