Runtime: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Directors: Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland
Quick Impressions:
Hoping to cry for ninety minutes straight but not sure how to make that happen? Have I got the movie for you!
Still Alice is definitely worth seeing for Oscar fans because it’s pretty clear at this point that Julianne Moore taking home the statuette for Best Actress this year, and her performance is both emotionally wrenching and thoroughly deserving (especially because she doesn’t have much competition). But unless you’re me and trying to squeeze in two remaining nominated performances this week so you can post a complete Best Actress Oscar write-up before the ceremony next Sunday, I would highly recommend against watching this relentless tear-jerker on Valentine’s Day.
Now is there a better choice out there in theaters right now? I don’t know. My husband and I both wanted to see Jupiter Rising, but that would have forced me to squeeze in two trips to the movies alone between Tuesday and Friday (because my daughter has Monday off).
We also flirted with the idea of Two Days, One Night. I have to see that before the week is out, too, and we both love Marion Cotillard. Ultimately my husband opted for Still Alice, though, reasoning that since he’s only seeing one film with me, he might as well pick the one featuring the performance that’s almost guaranteed to win Best Actress. (It probably didn’t hurt, either, that the film is not in French. Plus he likes Julianne Moore, and for all I know, he has a soft spot for stories about women suffering from Alzheimer’s. After all, when we saw Away From Her together several years ago, he fell madly in love with Julie Christie—which makes sense. She’s stunningly gorgeous and so photographable. Julianne Moore looks pretty luminous while she’s suffering through Alzheimer’s, too, I must say.)
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the plot of this film, but, in a nutshell, Julianne Moore is a brilliant linguistics professor at Columbia, and then shortly after her fiftieth birthday, she’s diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s and begins a (horrifically rapid) painful decline. And that’s not even the worst part. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but when you hear there’s good news and bad news, and the part about getting Alzheimer’s at fifty is the good news, you know you’re in for a pretty darn depressing ride.
I am really not exaggerating when I say that I cried through the whole movie. Right from the first scene, dramatic irony makes the movie uncomfortably sad. I mean, we get what’s happening right away, and Moore’s character (Alice Howland) and her family still barely have an inkling. Seriously, I cried so much during Still Alice that I kept getting tears all over my glasses. By the end, I felt almost as disoriented as poor Alice herself. I mean, the world was a blur. I couldn’t see a thing. Plus I had a horrible headache, probably from crying so much when I have a cold. (Everyone at our house has a cold. I know what you’re thinking. But I thought you were better now. Yes, we were better for like two days. And now we all have a cold again.)
My husband and I are obviously so hip. After a romantic “dinner” at 11:00 am at Outback Steakhouse, we proceeded to a matinee of the most obvious Valentine’s Day movie out right now—if you’re over seventy, which almost everyone else in the nearly sold out auditorium with us was.
And we cried like babies the whole time the film was on and left feeling like we’d been through the ringer. But I still think it was a better choice than Fifty Shades of Gray. True, I’ve never read the book or seen the movie, but when it comes to suffering non-stop torture, Anastasia Steele’s got nothing on poor Alice Howland, I promise you.
The Good:
This has got to be the most shameless tear-jerker I’ve seen in years, but it’s hard to get mad at the movie because Moore’s vulnerable central performance makes it all feel so real, so honest. Julianne Moore’s always been great at emoting. Even when she’s just sitting there nodding her head, passively participating in a conversation, she always comes across as such an emotive presence, really lending an empathetic ear to the other character talking to her in whatever movie.
And she really is overdue for an Oscar. I mean, honestly, ten to fifteen years ago, she was always either getting nominated or just missing the nomination. Her name constantly came up in the Oscar discussion like every single year. When all of that stopped a few years ago, I thought it was quite likely that her window had closed and she’d missed her chance. (Personally, I’ve never understood why Annette Benning got nominated for The Kids are All Right when Julianne Moore didn’t. Maybe she was playing “the bad guy” in a sense, but Moore’s performance was every bit as deserving as her co-star’s in my opinion.) So I think it’s really nice that she’s likely going to get her big Oscar moment this year.
I’ve always thought that Julianne Moore is a beautiful woman and a great actress. At any rate, she’s very easy to watch. She has so much screen presence. And she’s able to dominate a scene even when she has little dialogue (or little meaningful dialogue). Plus she never upstages her scene partners. She’s very gracious as a performer, and yet the audience never forgets she’s there, even when she’s playing the role of the silent but active listener in a dialogue. So as far as I’m concerned, fantastic, give her the Oscar. There’s certainly not a more deserving lead female performance this year. Even if this movie feels a little too sad to be taken seriously—I mean, this is the kind of thing you usually see on Lifetime or a network movie of the week—the worthiness of Moore’s turn as Alice is pretty hard to deny.
Also surprisingly good is Kristen Stewart, playing Lydia, the youngest of Alice’s three children with John, her husband and fellow Columbia professor (played by Alec Baldwin, who—fun fact!—also played the husband of Cate Blanchett, the Best Actress winner last year for Blue Jasmine. So ladies, if you want that Oscar, take note and convince Alec Baldwin to play your spouse in your next big project.)
That Stewart gives a good performance shouldn’t be such a surprise. Her work as a child actress (her terrific turn in Panic Room, for example) was always strong. But recently her personal scandals, decision to star in Twilight, and generally off-putting persona have unfortunately overshadowed her talents as a performer. (Honestly I have nothing against her, but sometimes I do wonder if she’s trying to antagonize the public on purpose. Some people have that “I don’t care what you think” attitude, but Stewart’s sometimes seems a lot more like, “I’d prefer you to hate me.” I’m not sure what that’s all about. Hopefully it’s a phase.)
In a less competitive year, Stewart probably would have snagged a Supporting Actress nomination (though maybe not if her peers feel the same antipathy for her that I sense from the general public). She’s actually fantastic as the troubled and still maturing Lydia, a young woman who seems to be growing as a person at an exponential rate that matches the pace of her mother’s tragic decline.
Stewart and Moore have the best parts and (thus, not surprisingly) give the best performances, but Alec Baldwin is pretty good, too, and the script gives him much less to work with. His character is actually pretty tricky, and I think he makes the most of the part, for sure.
The rest of the supporting cast is pretty unremarkable. Nobody gives a bad performance by any means, but all the other characters are essentially static and, frankly, just not as important to the story.
Kate Bosworth is pretty memorable as Alice’s older daughter, Anna, but that’s mainly because the character is so abrasive that she’s hard to forget. Of course, by the end, you really have to pity the poor woman. It’s a darn good thing she managed to win a Pulitzer for journalism, establish herself as a top reporter for a major publication, and have an illegitimate eight-year-old kid with Superman all by the precocious age of twenty-two because there are some dark days ahead of her. That’s for sure!
Nearly every scene in this entire movie makes you tear up, and it’s totally doing it on purpose. There’s nothing subtle about it. Ordinarily I’d resent a movie that so relentlessly and unfairly drained my tear ducts. I’d denounce it as cheap and manipulative. But it’s really impossible to feel that way because Moore’s emotionally honest performance elevates the material. The movie may be trying too hard, but she’s the real deal.
Best Scene:
All of the strongest scenes belong to Moore, but one of the highlights has to be when she delivers her speech near the end. As an audience we can hardly believe it. Is it possible that something is actually going to go right for once? Is she honestly going to get a momentary reprieve from the horrors of her situation? (But where is her husband? What is his problem?) Coming on the heels of an equally powerful scene opposite Stewart, Alice’s speech is a rare moment of triumph at an otherwise tragically bleak time of her life.
Best Action Sequence:
The set-up of the folder labelled Butterfly, and then the delayed follow-up of how that scenario actually plays out are both cringe-inducing and desperately sad. I connected with the movie quite a bit on a personal level, and this aspect of the story was particularly wrenching for me. (Obviously, I’ve never had early onset Alzheimer’s, but I have endured post-psychotic depression, and the two states seem remarkably similar to me—though, thankfully, the latter is only temporary).
Best Scene Visually:
This may seem odd, but I really liked the scene when she couldn’t find the bathroom. What happens here seems to sum up the entirety of her grim situation so vividly, so quickly. The way her husband finds her standing there in utter distress speaks volumes. The image of her in that moment practically tells her whole story.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Julianne Moore:
I love the early moment at night in bed when Alice tells her husband what’s been going on and breaks down crying hysterically. So often in movies, people burst into the kind of cinematic kind of tears that I associate with weepy 1940s melodramas. Now don’t get me wrong. Weepy 40s melodramas certainly aren’t bad. But I prefer the kind of ugly, jarring crying that Moore does here.
This type of quick, messy breakdown seems much more realistic to me. If you’re honestly as upset as she is, you’re not going to gradually begin to weep in a fragile, beautiful way. Alice just suddenly comes completely unglued and cries like her soul is trying to jump out of her throat. That’s actually much more the way these kinds of scenes play out in real life. She’s not just trying to express distress, she is completely distraught, overwhelmed. She doesn’t care what her crying looks like. She’s just wretchedly miserable, terrified, and unable to hold it in any longer.
People don’t usually amp up the distress quite this quickly in movie scenes, and I think Moore plays the moment just right.
The final scene of the film—between Moore and Stewart—is also played beautifully (by both actresses).
The Negatives:
What is going on with Alice’s husband? I’ve never read the novel, but in the movie at least, John’s character is very perplexing and ambiguously written. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and reveal that he was a) really a villain b) on the verge of a breakdown himself c) I don’t know—something!
Of course, I realize that real life doesn’t always present us with neat resolutions for every character making the person’s behavior make total sense. But I still find John frustrating.
Is he a loving husband or not? He’s definitely a workaholic, and he’s also clearly in extreme denial. At the beginning, I felt terribly sorry for him. What a horrible, unmanageable situation! What on earth is he supposed to do?
But then gradually he began to frustrate me. What is he supposed to do? I don’t know, but he never figures it out either. It’s like he never gives the situation any serious thought. He just buries himself in denial and work.
Under the circumstances, his denial is just ridiculously over the top. When Alice pours out her heart to him and finally expresses all her worries, his immediate response is, “That’s ridiculous! That’s impossible. Don’t get all worked up about that. We’re not even sure.”
That’s not an unrealistic response, and it’s not exactly bad advice, but he seems to lack basic empathy or compassion. Does he have no understanding of human nature? His wife is having a sobbing breakdown. She doesn’t want to hear about probability.
Several times, she looks to him for comfort, but his go-to response is always denial of the problem. She’s always like, “This horrible thing is happening,” and he reacts by saying, “That’s not happening. That won’t happen. Don’t say that. It won’t happen.”
How about saying, “I’ll be there for you, and I’ll love you no matter what?” He never gives her the kind of reassurances she needs. (I mean, at one point, he finally says, “I’ll be here,” but he’s kind of vague.)
What exactly would be so unreasonable about taking a sabbatical to spend some time with his wife before she completely loses her mind? After a while, he can see that her decline is rapid. Isn’t he a highly respected, tenured professor at Columbia? I know things are tough in academia these days, but surely his colleagues would have some understanding about his situation. Surely he could get a semester off under the circumstances.
(I’m also a bit surprised they kicked Alice out of Columbia so abruptly. She can’t teach, no, but surely she could have contributed to the department in some way, especially because she researches sociolinguistics and her ability to use language is breaking down. Couldn’t she participate in some study that might enlighten her colleagues? But we never learn the exact details of what happened there. Maybe she was simply told she couldn’t teach, and that seemed like the end of her career to her.)
I think Alec Baldwin gives a good performance and does what he can with John, but I wish the script told us a little more about what’s really going on with the character. His behavior is so contradictory. He’s very kind to Alice whenever he’s with her, but he avoids being with her as much as he possibly can. He doesn’t seem to see her as having actual agency or humanity when she’s stripped of her intellect. But then again, she is losing herself. Alice herself has no desire to continue living once she loses her mental functions. We know this because of the message she leaves herself while she’s still lucid.
The family dynamic in general is very baffling. Why does the older daughter have it in for her younger sister? I understand why Alice wants Lydia to go to college, but why does Anna care what she does? She has a career and a husband and a life of her own. Who cares what her little sister is doing! She may disapprove, but why does she behave in such a hostile way? And again, John—he clearly values intellect and education above all else, and yet he’s bankrolling his daughter’s acting efforts.
In some ways, it’s sad that Alice is unable to carry out her initial intentions. Then again, her daughter Lydia gains much needed closure this way. So even after the onset of complete dementia, Alice’s life remains valuable because her continued presence helps to heal her relationship with Lydia.
Alzheimer’s is such a crushing diagnosis. It devastates entire families. When I was a child, my aunt and uncle took care of elderly patients in their home, and most of them suffered from Alzheimer’s. They were pretty vacant and often repeated pet phrases that made no sense to anyone else. When I was in college, my best friend’s father developed early onset Alzheimer’s, and experiencing his decline added immense stress to her life, causing long term ramifications. At around the same time, my paternal grandfather’s second wife developed Alzheimer’s. The entire experience was so draining, almost soul crushing, really. It was difficult financially and almost destroyed him emotionally. He even opened up to me about his extreme distress, and we weren’t particularly close (because I never met him until I was ten, and never spent much time with him until I was a teenager). To see someone you love disappearing before your eyes—that’s awful. But they often live a long time like that, becoming increasingly difficult to care for (often violent. Watching the movie, I often thought, They’re so lucky that Alice is docile). Then there’s the immense expense of getting the person proper care. My grandpa literally had to divest himself of everything he owned just to get any kind of government help, which is ridiculous. The Howlands, fortunately, seem pretty comfortable financially, but in this country, we really need to provide more resources to middle and working class families trying to find adequate help for a loved one who requires full care 24/7. For a long time, my grandpa tried to take care of his wife in his home with the help of his nearly ninety-year-old mother. As you can imagine, as her condition declined, that eventually became impossible. Alzheimer’s is particularly devastating to families because it doesn’t affect just the person afflicted. It often bankrupts and exhausts the entire family.
I really feel for the character of John, but I wish the story explored his point of view more fully. We never really know exactly what’s going on with him, and I think the film would be much stronger if we did.
Overall:
Still Alice is one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. I cried for practically the entire runtime. Right from the start, it starts tugging on your heart strings, and it never lets go. Both Julianne Moore and Kristen Stewart give fantastic performances, and Moore’s practically guaranteed the Best Actress Oscar at this point. Of course, Moore’s performance drives the film, and it’s really the entire reason to see the movie. Nothing else matters much but Alice. It’s a small story, but wow is it an emotional one. Don’t see this movie in the theater if you’re afraid to cry in public because I promise you, there will be tears.