Still Alice

“It feels like my brain is fuck­ing dying,” says Dr Alice How­land (Julianne Moore), a world-renowned lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor with a pen­chant for play­ing ​‘Words with Friends.’ The foun­da­tion of Alice’s life and work begins to crum­ble when she is diag­nosed with ear­ly-onset Alzheimer’s dis­ease at the age of 50. An adap­ta­tion of Lisa Genova’s best­selling 2007 nov­el, the film chron­i­cles Alice’s strug­gle as her mem­o­ry slow­ly but steadi­ly slips away from her.

While Still Alice shares a num­ber of uncan­ny sim­i­lar­i­ties with the mod­ern maudlin weepie (tragedy, beach­es, an excess of emo­tion) it nev­er lurch­es into the realm of Spark­sian melo­dra­ma. What keeps the film from feel­ing cloy­ing or manip­u­la­tive is its insis­tence on explor­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of Alice’s inte­ri­or intel­lec­tu­al rather than sen­ti­men­tal world. For Alice, who open­ly admits to hav­ing always been defined by her intel­lect, for­get­ting the name of her son’s girl­friend is some­how less trau­mat­ic than for­get­ting philo­log­i­cal ter­mi­nol­o­gy. By keep­ing a tight focus on Alice’s intel­lec­tu­al iden­ti­ty, the film offers an uncom­fort­ably inti­mate insight into one woman’s self-fash­ion­ing and the untime­ly unrav­el­ling of said.

Moore man­ages to exude both mater­nal warmth and cere­bral grace­ful­ness as Alice. How­ev­er, the real sur­prise is not the adept­ness of Moore’s per­for­mance but the film’s stel­lar sup­port­ing cast: Alec Bald­win as her dot­ing but self­ish hus­band John (also an aca­d­e­m­ic); Kate Bosworth as an uptight auburn urban­ite and their old­est daugh­ter; and Kris­ten Stewart’s Lydia — the baby of the fam­i­ly and an aspir­ing actress liv­ing in Los Angeles.

Stew­art, as the family’s most emo­tion­al­ly expres­sive mem­ber, radi­ates a like­able low-key charm that is a wel­come change from the actress’s usu­al screen sulk­i­ness. Lydia’s rela­tion­ship with her moth­er serves as the emo­tion­al lynch­pin of the film; from their Skype con­ver­sa­tions to their board­walk strolls, Stew­art and Moore’s pal­pa­ble onscreen chem­istry is always reward­ing to watch. As the tough-talk­ing Lydia soft­ens upon her return to New York, Alice slow­ly hard­ens, her lucid­i­ty a heart­break­ing­ly dis­tant mem­o­ry trapped behind per­ma­nent­ly glazed eyes.

Though it’s down­er sub­ject mat­ter in a gen­er­al sense, Alice is per­mit­ted brief flash­es of respite. Speak­ing ele­gant­ly about her con­di­tion on stage, she main­tains that she is ​“not suf­fer­ing,” but sim­ply ​“strug­gling.” That’s not to say that direct­ing duo Richard Glatzer and Wash West­more­land shy away from Alice’s dark­er moments. ​“I wish I had can­cer,” she hiss­es, while anoth­er scene sees her record a sui­cide note to her­self — replete with detailed instruc­tions — in the form of a Pho­to Booth video. Alice’s down­ward spi­ral often feels irre­deemably bleak, char­ac­terised by the exis­ten­tial anger that accom­pa­nies injustice.

It’s a film which explores the fate of New York’s self-appoint­ed intel­li­gentsia, and is duly set against the back­drop of the Upper West Side in all its rainy, leafy opu­lence. This part of the city seems to be a safe space to explore the self-actu­al­i­sa­tion of the priv­i­leged — and per­haps the thing that stops the film from veer­ing into the ter­ri­to­ry of trite­ness. ​“You were relent­less; you want­ed every­thing and all at once,” John tells Alice of her youth. In Still Alice, that rest­less desire is the thing that is dis­solv­ing right in front of our eyes.