Still Alice

Still Alice is based on Lisa Genova's 2007 novel and it tells the story of Dr Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), a linguistics professor at Columbia University who is diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer's disease at the age of just 50.

When Alice starts to forget certain words, she meets with her doctor and is given the terrible news. Gaining such detailed knowledge of your eventual demise can’t be much fun.

The film deals with things mostly from Alice’s point of view. At first, she tries to carry on as normal but she is soon released from her teaching job. While she still can, she gives a speech on Alzheimer following the words with a highlighter. She also leaves a video for herself with instructions on how to take her own life when things get really bad.

Soon though her disease progresses, she gets lost whilst jogging and is unable to remember where the bathroom is. Executing her suicide plan also doesn’t work out, in what is probably the film’s best scene.

If Alice mostly gets on with her life, then so do her family. While hysteria would not have been welcome, it’s all a bit too deadpan at times. 

For her husband (Alec Baldwin), Alice’s diagnosis comes at a time when he is pursuing a plum new job in Minnesota. He doesn’t seem the loving type anyway but her diagnosis doesn’t seem to soften him much and he spends little time with his ill wife.

Their three grown up children, more understandably, also get on with their own lives even when finding out that the disease is of a rare, hereditary kind. Her eldest, the tightly-wound and pregnant Anna (Kate Bosworth) finds she has the gene but their son doesn’t. Their youngest daughter, the slightly wayward Lydia (Kristen Stewart), doesn’t want to know. Alice is not happy that Lydia is putting acting ahead of a college education. Yet it is this wayward daughter who eventually volunteers to take care of her.

The film is Oscar bait for sure and Moore did win. She is excellent as are many of the cast but the film itself is a little underwhelming.