Movie review: Still Alice

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Still Alice is the story of Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) - wife to John (Alec Baldwin) and mother to Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart). She is a much respected Linguistics Professor at Columbia which indicates to the audience exactly how learned Alice is and how much words and language means to her. However lapses in her memory and a disturbing incident where Alice finds herself lost in what is a familiar area to her, sees her visiting a neurologist who, after a series of tests diagnoses Alice with early-onset Alzheimers disease at the age of 51.

The film follows Alice and her family through the initial diagnosis and her seemingly rapid decline. The audience stays close to Alice at all times, sometimes even entering into Alice's experience with muffled sounds, blurred vision and confused context. Time even seems to disappear just as it does for Alice, even though the story is told in a linear fashion, and so the audience enters into Alice's confusion - did that happen just yesterday or has time slipped away from us?

Julianne Moore's portrayal of Alice is brilliant. She is unsentimental, never suggesting for a moment that what happens to Alice is a tragedy, never making it into a drama. Alice never feels sorry for herself but instead sets herself challenges for managing her own illness for as long as possible. As the disease progresses we watch the light slowly leave Moore's face - her features become slack, her luminosity diminishes. We almost feel her confusion as words slowly disappear and faces become unfamiliar. As Alice detaches from the world around her, Moore's voice becomes expressionless, a monotone; as though she is simply responding to things and people by rote - knowing that this is the right thing to say even though she no longer knows why. Eventually the words that have been so important to her during her entire professional career almost disappear completely.

There is no happy ending for this story. Even though the audience triumphs with Alice when she finds ways to manage a new set of limitations, the ground once again crumbles beneath her feet and we share her growing sense of panic that she is losing more and more of herself. The disease even thwarts Alice carrying out a pre - planned suicide attempt, paving the way for the audience to accept that there is no way to stop Alice's inevitable decline.

Although the other players in this story have an important role and what happens to Alice affects them all, I found it interesting in the way that the story was shown through Alice's experience. Whilst they are all prominent in the beginning of the film, they eventually fade into the periphery,  just as they do for Alice. Eventually they simply disappear. Alice's husband John, for instance, leaves Alice in the care of their younger daughter Lydia to pursue his career in another state. We neither see him leave, nor does Alice mourn his leaving. He simply disappears.

I was in two minds about whether I should see Still Alice. See, it's very up close and personal on a couple of levels. One, because both my maternal grandfather and grandmother as well as my great-grandmother had it. My grandfather in particular, had a big impact on my childhood and growing up years as his form was early an early onset type called multi-infaarct dementia. I was too young to really grasp what was happening to him, too young to make a real difference to his life and be a support to him until he finally passed away in 1984. My Nanna passed away at the age of 87 in 2011, so as an adult I was able to watch her decline knowing exactly what was happening and be more of an active support to her in her final years.

The second reason I hesitated about seeing Still Alice is that an MRI of my brain a few years ago revealed generalised atrophy. The words my doctor said to me were, "We don't normally see this sort of atrophy in people your age. It's normally seen in adults in their late 60's, so we don't really know what this means for you."

No, I don't know what this means for me. I can hazard a guess, but that's all it is. A guess. My doctor and I talked and we decided that seeing I am asymptomatic and firing on all four cylinders we would leave things as they are. I am still sharp, still active, still healthy. Let's concentrate on the here and now, enjoying life just as it is and not worrying about what could be. Why worry about what could be when there's so much of now to enjoy?

Having said that though, I've found that it's really important to sometimes talk about what could be. I think the experience with my grandparents taught me that. I think about Pa every single day. There's been not one day since August 24, 1984 that he hasn't flitted through my thoughts at some stage. I wish I had've known what would have brought him comfort in the confusion. I have small, precious memories of times where I was able to infiltrate his fog and connect with him, even just for a few moments. With Nanna I knew more and I realised, near the end, that a lot of what I was doing for her was because I knew it was what she would have liked and enjoyed before the fog descended. On my last day with her I played her a song that meant a lot to her. I asked her if she remembered the song. She said she didn't and I told her, "That's ok Nanna. I know this song and I know what it meant to you and whenever I hear it I think of you." 

It was then that I realised the importance of talking about what could be before it becomes a reality. Playing that song to my Nanna on our last day together brought ME comfort because I knew it was something SHE liked. I felt connected to her in the fog. I felt as though I wasn't leaving her alone in it. 

So, I talk about the "what could be's" with the people who love me. I tell them how much I love having my hair stroked, what songs mean the most to me. I ask them to remind me of times where we were laughing so hard we almost peed our pants, times where we were silly. I tell them I love listening to people read story books like they do in kindergarten, how much I adore the beach. I tell them all these things so that they can have things to do that will bring some kind of connection to me if ever the fog descends and I start drifting away. I tell them so that they will have those comforting memories to sustain if ever I should drift away totally....

Still Alice was incredibly comforting to me. I can't quite explain why, but seeing the story told in such a sensitive, dignified manner made me less afraid.