Still Alice

Still Alice

*** / **** 

Reviewed By Sean Trolinder

 

Directed by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

 

Cast: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, Shane McRae, Stephen Kunken

 

 

 

             Hollywood is notorious for producing too many male-themed films, which make it difficult for female driven dramas to find their footing. Even the successful movies where Sandra Bullock controlled the action have masculine traits (football in The Blind Side and scientific odyssey in Gravity). Though the occasional film where women defy the clichés comes along (see Thelma & Louise), some of the more memorable female-centered films that stand out in history have to do with illness in one form or another (see Terms of Endearment or Iris). With that said, Still Alice does not reinvent the wheel when exploring illness, but what makes it better than the run of the mill, melodramatic story dealing with this issue is Julianne Moore’s performance and how a deteriorating mind can challenge the professional success of an intelligent, successful heroine.

            In the beginning, Alice Howland (played by Julianne Moore) celebrates her fiftieth birthday with her husband, John (played by Alec Baldwin), and two of her adult children—Anna (played by Kate Bosworth) and Tom (played by Hunter Parrish). One of the kids is missing, Lydia (played by Kristen Stewart), and Anna proceeds to criticize her sister’s selfishness. We learn many things early on: one, Alice is a leading scholar in linguistics who teaches at Columbia University and language is her life; two, Lydia lives in Los Angeles and struggles as an aspiring actress, a profession Alice does not approve of; and three, John is a workaholic, so much so that everything is a second priority. It is interesting that Alice’s age is revealed early on and that linguistics is her field of expertize, since once we see signs of her memory fading, we understand that the stakes are incredibly high and she stands to lose much more.

            Alice’s memory begins eroding during a lecture that she gives at UCLA, where she wants to discuss the cognitive development of irregular verbs in children around the ages of six months and two and half years. During this stage, children begin picking up patterns in language without much criticism, but in the middle of the lecture, Alice pauses, drawing a blank on what to say next. It is a noticeable misstep as Alice takes a deep breath and moves onto another point in her lesson. At first, Alice thinks the incident isn’t a big deal, that it was a simple moment of confusion and an effect of turning fifty. However, once she arrives back in New York City, the camera shows a series of long shots of Alice jogging around the Columbia campus, and once she arrives at a concrete stairwell, directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland use rack focus to show of the environment around Alice becoming a fog and it takes several seconds before the foreground comes back into focus, a way to help the audience understand that Alice’s condition is a bit more serious. As a precaution, Alice visits Dr. Benjamin (played by Stephen Kankum), who runs a series of tests. Via a point of view shot told in Benjamin’s perspective, we read Alice’s body language as she excels through the picture identification part of the test, but she struggles to remember an address that she was instructed to keep in mind earlier. Later, Dr. Benjamin informs Alice that she’s experiencing a rare form of Alzheimer’s, one that not many people get at her age.

            Then, the plot thickens when Alice and John are informed that the disease could be genetic, so there runs a good chance that one of their children—Anna, Tom, or Lydia—will develop it later in life. Alice grows more depressed, feeling responsible for possibly harming the lives of one of her kids, so she ends up making a video for herself, instructing her to take a bottle of pills with water in a drawer if her mind fades to the point where she can no longer remember the name of her eldest daughter, Anna. The rest of the movie then explores how Alice tries to develop a life with the disease, what’s to come of her career at Columbia, whether John is strong enough to put work aside to aid his wife, and whether Alice can save her relationship with Lydia, who she is at odds with. Lydia refuses to attend college and have a plan B if acting does not work out, and Alice worries what Lydia will do once her mind completely crumbles and she can no longer offer motherly advice.

            In a year where cinematography has been truly impressive (see Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, Whiplash, Foxcatcher, and even a mediocre film like Unbroken), I do have to commend Still Alice for being one of the better films to ever use rack focus to capture the psychology of the protagonist. Though I have discussed how the technique was used when Alice jogged around Colombia, Glatzer and Westmoreland use it quite often throughout, and one of its most masterful attempts at it is toward the end of the movie, when Alice visits Dr. Benjamin again to do the exact same test when her mental state was functioning well. Also, Moore’s work is truly moving and Oscar worthy, especially in the scenes where she gets lost looking for the bathroom in her own house and when she finds the courage to read an essay she wrote for the Alzheimer’s Association. Audience members around me were weeping about halfway through, a sign that Moore is earning this Oscar, not merely getting it as a lifetime achievement award. Moreover, the evolution of Kristen Stewart’s character, Lydia, is touching as she seems like the one family member who takes Alice’s disease very seriously, up to the point where she must make a decision to support her mother or give up the dream of acting.

            Even with all the perks, the film does cave into melodrama a few times. There are points when John comes off as a complete jerk and the scenes when he argues with Alice about missing dinner plans and his desire to take another job instead of requesting for his own sabbatical at Columbia are clichés of the unsupportive husband. This is not to say John isn’t supportive in his own way, but we need more films with completely devoted husbands, such as Stanley Tucci’s turn in Julie & Julia.

            Still Alice is a good movie, but not quite on the same level as Terms of Endearment or even Iris. However, it is going to be the one film that earns Julianne Moore her much overdue Oscar and the film does explore Alzheimer’s in an interesting way. It also might be the film that helps Kristen Stewart get better roles and to shed herself of only being known for the dreadful Twilight series.