Still Alice

I had already marked this movie down as a "no" when the cinema preview club we attend showed it this morning. And I'm very glad they did.

Few movies about Alzheimer's show things almost entirely from the perspective of the victim, and even fewer try to grapple with her internal thoughts and feelings as the disease progresses. Still Alice does just that.

Taking an exceptionally verbal and smart person and giving her early onset Alzheimer's and watching how she deals with it and how she feels about it made this an exceptional film. So does the always-excellent Julianne Moore, who outdoes herself in an Oscar-worthy performance.

The movie's full of highlights: the Skypeing between mom and daughter Kristin Stewart, the relatively healthy Julianne leaving a video for her much sicker self to discover; the question only one person asks: "How does it make you feel?" And extra credit for the double use of Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat."

I know that a lot of the criticism is that this movie didn't get down and dirty enough. Alzheimers is a horrible thing for the survivors to deal with. Perhaps it can only truly by dealt with in documentary form. Julianne Moore is utterly amazing and anyone who says this film isn't well researched did not read about her approach. Yes, there are things that could have been shown to make it even more frightening. We could have seen specific bodily functions affected. We could have seen more irrationality and pain. But it needs to be accessible. I believe if we are watching a fictional account, this is very well done.

It probably goes without saying, but in my opinion "Still Alice" is right up there among this year's best pictures.

And what ultimately makes author Lisa Genova's debut bestselling novel so personal, yet so universal and identifiable in it's messages, are the performances. Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart are a part of a strong supporting cast, that will leave a lasting impression in your mind and it will be more than deserved. Both of their characters were so real - warm, supportive and earthly. And while both Baldwin and Stewart have taken the occasional misstep in their respective pasts, both of them once again showed without a doubt their acting abilities and scope, a word linguistics professor Dr. Alice Howland used, albeit with great difficulties, to describe her daughter Lydia (played by Stewart) in one point of the film.

And what a performance by Julianne Moore that was! She essentially made an already rich character in Alice, a frankly too young Alzheimer's disease patient, who also happens to be a renown linguistics professor, even more dimensional and rich. Moore's Alice is a strong, intelligent woman when we first meet her at her birthday at the beginning of the film. At that moment, Moore is confident and full of purpose. As she gets diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, that her children might have inherited from her, and time goes by, Alice becomes a shadow of herself, whose mental health deteriorates at an alarmingly fast rate. And that is the part that Moore portrayed with such skill and graceful pain, that the viewer can't help but get irreversibly emotionally involved with her character. We feel for her, we cry with her, we wish she would get better, although it is clear that is sadly not going to happen. And Moore's Alice knows it as well. And that makes the journey through her story even more challenging, difficult and painful for the viewer. Or as Beverly Beckham of The Boston Globe put it "This is Alice Howland's story, for as long as she can tell it".

The film was directed and adapted by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, who share both the writing and directing duties on almost all of their projects to date. The two somehow complete each other and find the balance, that is needed to tell such a delicate story in a manner, which can do it proper justice.

I will probably be the only one saying this, but I thought the score was tremendous as well. Kudos goes to composer Ilan Eshkeri, who did an amazing job on the film. The music is often intense and minimalistic, it feels like it is just an addition to the already rich environment the characters find themselves in and I would love to see at least a nomination at the Oscars for Eshkeri, although I highly doubt it.

So, to wrap it up in a nutshell: Still Alice is a wonderful film, an intimate and fascinating study in the field of family drama, and one of the year's best. I definitely hope to see some awards buzz mainly around the cast - both Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart deserve it for their delicate and supportive portrayal of husband John and youngest daughter Lydia, respectively, who never gave up on Moore's Alice. And Julianne Moore - well, what can I say - her brutally sad and honest portrayal of Alice deserves to go down in the books of top-notch acting and she will reap the fruits of her work a long time from now (well, mostly, at the end of February, I hope).

So it is a nine out of ten stars from me, only because I felt there could have been more screen time for the other children in the Howland family, and therefore the film could have been at least 10-15 minutes longer.

But solely on Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart's impeccable acting, I say this film is among the very best in the subject and also among the best titles this year.

My grade: 9/10

I have a sister in law at age 66 with end stage ALZ and I myself have stage 4 terminal brain cancer at age 62. I haven't been able to adequately and satisfactorily articulate the effect of loss of memory as well as this movie did. I have lost everything, but I have memories that bubble to the surface that keep me going. Life is not about stuff. Life is animating memories.

Still Alice tells the story of a Columbia cognitive psychologist diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease played by Julianne Moore who in my opinion gave the best performance of her career.

Kristen Stewart and Alec Baldwin also give very good performances and I think that Ms.Stewart successfully shed the "Twilight" vampire stereotype.

Just like any disease, your fight is as strong as your support system. Not only Alice's but Julianne Moore's support system is strong as well with a supporting cast of Kristen Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish, and a score that never has the audience wondering about their emotions but has them focused on Alice's.

An amazing movie I recommend it to everyone