Still Alice

[projekktor id=’17343′]

Still Alice is a drama film based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Lisa Genova, written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. The film, which had it’s world premiere at TIFF last year, stars Julianne Moore in the lead role. Her performance has earned her a slew of award nominations and wins including a Best Actress win at this year’s Golden Globes and an Oscar nomination. The supporting cast includes Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, and Hunter Parrish.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a diagnosis of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, Alice and her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was is frightening, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

Due to an untimely circumstance, the directing duo were initially on the fence about whether to direct the film or not. As Westmoreland explains, “Earlier in the year, Richard had visited a neurologist in Los Angeles as a result of a slight slurring of his speech. The doctor had taken one look in his mouth, at his strangely undulating tongue, and said, ‘I think it’s ALS.’ We’d spent a lot of time in the following months dealing with the repercussions of this, both medically and emotionally. Reading the first few chapters of the book, certain similarities resonated eerily with our own experience: the neurologist Alice initially visits asks the same questions Richard had heard at his early examinations when there were suspicions of a stroke; and the growing sense of dread as the diagnosis approached, the sense being cut down when life was at its fullest, was all too familiar. Did we really want to take on this movie right now..?”

You can read our review of the film here. Still Alice is rated PG.