Review 752: Still Alice

  

On the surface, Still Alice is a very simple film, but once you dig deeper, you find a sad but compelling and poignant drama that  its subject matter thanks to a tour de force performance from Julianne Moore. 

Based on the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova, Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a renowned linguistics professor who's happily married to her husband John (Alec Baldwin) and has three grown up children, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actress, Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Tom (Hunter Parrish). When Alice starts to forget words, she's diagnosed with Early-Onset Altzheimer's Disease, her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was proves to be frightening, heartbreaking and inspiring. 

What makes Still Alice such a moving experience is that it's an open-eye and deep look at the tragedy and horrors of Altzheimer's disease and how it affects Alice and those around her. The focus stays on Alice's own experience and how she and her family react to it. It's heart wrenching but never hopeless, it's very well balanced.

The screenplay by writing/directing team Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland never treats Alice as a victim of her disease but rather it creates empathy for her plight, how she handles it and how it affects the people in her life. 

There's a subtext of cherising life, the memories of people and the things that we love 

The score by Ilan Eshkeri is beautiful, the cinematography is terrific; French DP Denis Lenoir uses shallow depth to give us that sense of Alice's inner isolation and take us inside her mind. Waves are a common motif throughout the film because Alice's condition comes and goes. The production design is  everything in Alice 

Julianne Moore delivers a performance playing Alice Howland that's sure to nab her a Best Actress Oscar. At the beginning of the film, Alice is on top of the world, accomplished, happy and  Moore exubes confidence and competence in her early scenes as well as the sadness and confusion of her coming down with Altzheimer's as the film progresses. The sad irony that Alice, a linguistics expert has trouble articulating herself is very  and adds strongly to the films sense of sadness because, more than anyone, Alice understands the power of self-expression.

Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart also do strong work playing John and Lydia, Alice's husaband and youngest daughter respectively. At the beginning, Lydia is very rebelious, doesn't want to go to college and do a theatre group instead which Alice doesn't particularly think is a great idea but as Alice deals with her disease, they grow closer perhaps than they ever have before 

Kate Bosworth doesn't lag too far behind playing Alice's eldest daughter Anna. In contrast to Lydia, Anna is very ambitious, almost like a mini version of Alice.

Still Alice is    4.5/5

The Anonymous Critic.