Summary:
Still Alice is a dramatic film based on a novel by
neuroscientist Lisa Genova. It is the story of Alice Howland (played by
Julianne Moore), a Columbia University linguistics professor whose life is
upended by the diagnosis of early-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease shortly
after her 50th birthday. What begins insidiously with difficulty
finding a word during an important lecture, and getting lost on a familiar
running trail, rapidly progresses to more devastating lapses in memory and
cognition that are a stark contrast from Alice’s usual function. On top of
this, the family is faced with the reality that Alice’s children are also at
risk for this genetic condition.
Scenes of Alice’s life are
intermixed with her extensive cognitive evaluation by a neurologist. In the
office, we watch her struggle to remember the name and address of an imaginary
person within minutes of her neurologist telling her; at home, we observe the
way she forgets beloved recipes, and even the people she has met just moments
before.
As the film progresses, it
becomes increasingly painful to watch the deterioration of Alice’s condition,
and the effect it has on her loved ones. We see the raw humanity of her
grappling with this in various realms—in a particularly heartbreaking scene,
she experiences incontinence for the first time because she can’t find the
bathroom in her own home. In a later scene, she forgets her daughter after
watching her perform in a play. Throughout the film, she clings desperately to
her phone, in which she has listed certain essential questions about her life
that she feels, if eventually forgotten, warrant her suicide by overdosing on
sleeping pills.
Despite these enormous challenges
to both her sense of self and her relationships, Alice’s character is presented
with the resilience of so many individuals who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
In a pivotal scene, Alice speaks at an Alzheimer’s Association conference;
despite needing to highlight each sentence as she reads it to remember what she
has already said, she is able to share her story authentically as the audience
and her family is moved to tears.
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