"Still Alice"

Title: Still Alice
Director: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Writer: Lisa Genova (novel), Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (screenplay)
Category: Drama
Duration: 101 min
Rate:

Since the award season is already ongoing, it seems fair to write about one of the many movies that is receiving well deserved praises as well as nominations and awards.

The movie follows the life of Professor Alice Howland after she is being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Being a linguistic professor, Alice has a hard time accepting her faith after learning that sooner rather than later she will completely lose the ability to express her thoughts properly. Not only that, but she will also start to forget everyone around her, the memories of her life, her family and her career. She will start inexorably to forget herself.

Writing a movie about loss is something difficult and tricky. Sometimes it can be quite hard to convey this deep and raw emotion. In Still Alice, what made it possible to really represent what it means to discover that your life is going to change without you even realising it, was Julianne Moore’s performance.

The movie was not strong by itself, however, what made it an astonishing work of art was Julianne Moore portray of this broken woman who is losing everything, starting from herself. Through Alice we witness the progression of this cruel disease, and her strength to fight it, even though sooner or later we already know that she will lose the will to do so without even realising it.

Both the sense of oblivion and loss are deeply embedded in the filming technique as well. Some of the scenes are out of focus to really represent visually the confusion felt by the protagonist. This disorientation and uncertainty develop throughout the movie, following the progression of the disease. Even the perception of time is distorted because everything is reflected through Alice's mind and eyes. Along with her the audience starts to lose its bearings. While I was watching the story unravel, I felt like no time was passing at all, but, as soon as a character told to another that Alice had lost or did something two months ago instead of a couple of hours before, I would feel lost and unsettle myself.

Julianne completely lost herself in the character; she understood Alice's devotion to her job, her love for words, languages and memory. However, what made her performance worthy of the best actress in a leading role award at the golden globes and SAG awards, as well as her Oscar nomination, is her deep understanding of the disease and what it does to a person. Throughout the movie I clearly felt a strong sympathy towards the main character every time a small piece of her started to slowly fade away. When she forgot something, or someone, my heart broke for her. Her panic attacks, the ever so rare realisations that she is inexorably getting worse with the passing of time felt so real. I could not tell apart the actor from the character because Julianne became Alice. She became the disease.

Her performance made this movie touching and real. For the first time the focus was not on the family around the sick patient, their loss and their grief, it was about the patient and her realisation of being powerless against an enemy that slowly eats your soul without giving you enough time to process what is happening. 

Still Alice is a good movie, a film that pushes the audience to think about what it means to see your life slipping through your fingers. It is about cherishing every moment that we have on this world with the people we love and to never take them for granted. 

Till next time,

Fred

Here the movie trailer: