Still Alice Review

Starring: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish

There's a scene in Still Alice, where Dr. Alice Howland and her husband go to a play starring her daughter. While Alice disagrees with her daughter's decision to pursue an acting career, she still supports her. After the play, the actors come out and Alice greets her daughter Lydia by saying she "empathized with her character" and she thought she was great. She then asks how long she's been working at the theater, and how long she'll stay. To which her other daughter replies: "This is your daughter, Mom, you remember?" Alice Howland has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Few movies I've seen have been as scary as Still Alice. This is not your typical slasher flick. This is a real-life, brutal, horror story. It's the story of a renowned professor of linguistics whose life just slips away after her diagnosis with the rare form of Alzheimer's disease. Julianne Moore plays Alice with such fearless charisma, her turn for the worst is utterly heartbreaking to watch. Her ambitious self crumbles into a wreck who can't even recognize her own children.

For me, Still Alice brought me down really hard. I didn't cry as much as I thought I would. But when the credits rolled, I felt hit by a train. My whole body was weak, and my mind was racing. This movie makes you think, and throughout the movie, I considered the question I'm sure everyone else did. What if I had Alzheimer's? It's a ridiculous thought, as I'm only 17. But you cannot see this movie without thinking of 1000 different storylines of your own destruction at the hands of this disease. Questions popped in my head. What would my friends do? My brother? My kids? Who would take care of me? How could I stand to forget how I met my best friend, or the name of my firstborn, or even the words to my favorite song. Those priceless memories would slip one by one. Isn't that horrifying? Can this not qualify Still Alice as a real-life horror movie?

At one point in the movie, Alice tells her husband that she wishes she had cancer. Because everyone walks for cancer, and raises money while wearing ribbons, and she wouldn't be ashamed to have cancer. With early-onset Alzheimer's, she's alone, and embarrassed. Everyone has to pay her special attention, and she feels as if her life has become a circus, with her as the main event. If things weren't bad enough for Alice, she also has Familial Alzheimer's, which means she could have doomed all of her children to suffer her same fate. Still Alice is not afraid to "go there." It goes into territory that I didn't expect it to, dealing with all of the complex emotions she feels, including depression, anger, and regret. Julianne Moore gives an outstanding performance in the titular role. The Oscars are on Sunday, and don't be surprised if she walks away with the Best Actress award. Alec Baldwin plays her sometimes supportive husband, in another role that lets him be a jerk, but a sympathetic jerk. He does a good job though, as does the rest of the cast. Kate Bosworth was a standout for me, playing Alice's oldest daughter Anna. Sadly, her name is said by Alice in many different variarions, whether it be Anne, or Hannah, as her memory fades. Kristen Stewart plays her youngest daughter Lydia, who is (ironically) a failing actress who doesn't have a grip on reality. I think she did very well here, but I think she could have done a little more. Though now, I can no longer agree with anyone who says Kristen Stewart (of previous Twilight fame) is a terrible actress.

I think that Still Alice succeeds because it is able to reaffirm qualities of life. And that is memory. We're told sometimes to not dwell on the past, and look to the future. This movie tells a story of a woman losing her past, from the memories of her predeceased sister, to what happened just the day before. I'm not spoiling any of the suspenseful moments of the movie, but with her disease, she was guaranteed a long life, but living as a shell of her former self. I cannot say enough positive things about how great Julianne Moore was in this movie. She really is the "best" so if she doesn't win I'll be very surprised. At the end of the day I just can't seem to find anything wrong with Still Alice. It profoundly affected me, more than any movie in the last year has, which makes it worth the ticket.

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