Losing What Matters Most

Still Alice

It is sad to me that the amount of devastating terminal diseases that plague our world is so astronomical. Everyday people around the world are being treated for some form of cancer or illness that they may never recover from. Where does Hollywood fit into this? Well there isn’t a year that goes by that Hollywood doesn’t try to bring awareness to any number of diseases in some form or another. Last year the film The Fault in Our Stars showcased a teenage girl with Thyroid cancer. In 1993 Tom Hanks gave an Oscar winning performance in Philadelphia about a lawyer who contracts AIDS. 2014 also brought to the forefront awareness to a disease that nearly 44 million people have to deal with each year and a disease that has hit me on a very personal level.

 Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore Maps to the Stars) is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University. She has a loving husband, John (Alec Baldwin Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation), and three beautiful children. It is only when Alice starts to forget random things that she begins to contemplate there being anything wrong with her life. Alice consults with a neurologist and is given the painful news that she has early onset familial Alzheimer’s  disease. With her most valuable tool deteriorating, Alice must find a way to live a normal life with the people she loves the most.

This was a beautiful punch-in-the-gut of a movie for me. Still Alice was so incredibly acted and directed that it really felt like I was going on this journey with Alice. There is a fierce truth that is presented in this film and it should be recognized more by people in everyday life. Like any type of cancer, Alzheimer’s is an illness with no light at the end of the tunnel. It has claimed the life of many people, including my grandfather. Even though I knew I was watching a movie, I was so vividly reminded of what my grandfather went through and that was all because of Moore’s brilliant performance.

This film lives or dies by whomever played Alice and Moore delivered in a huge way. There is so much that I can sit here and say about how wonderful Julianne Moore was in this movie, but no words can describe her greatness in this film. Please see it for yourself. Other than Moore, Baldwin was very good as Alice’s husband. Baldwin does a wonderful job of showing his devotion for his wife and how his internal pain is very real. I also impressed with Kristen Stewart (Twilight), who plays Alice’s youngest daughter Lydia. Stewart displays very good emotional range in a lot of her scenes.

What really captivated me about writers/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Last of Robin Hood) was the way they used the camera to show Alice’s status. They use the focus to depict her ability to remember people or even places that Alice is at. I thought that was an interesting way of showing the audience Alice’s world. I know this sounds trivial, but when you see this effect first hand you can understand her mind focusing in and out.

Still Alice is a wonderful film in a tear-jerking way that I hope brings more notice to this horrible disease. The cast is amazing and the direction is unique. This movie is for everyone, not just Julianne Moore fans like me. However, like I have hinted throughout parts of this review, if I have convinced you to see this movie then I would bring the tissues because I even cried.

The Verdict: Worth Your Time.