I love horror movies and when I think of what a horror film is about there’s nothing to be truly afraid of other than your own irrational fears and superstitions. While the Alzheimer drama Still Alice doesn’t feature any monsters ghosts or goblins it is let me assure you a horror movie nonetheless. Watching someone rapidly decline from early-onset Alzheimer’s (with frightening convincingness on film) is painful and sad enough but it constantly hammers you with a terrible thought: this is real and it could happen to me.
Well in the case of Julianne Moore’s character Alice she was doomed from the start though she never knew it. Alice has it all — a successful academic career as a professor and leading expert on linguistics an equally accomplished husband (Alec Baldwin) three perfect-looking kids and a brownstone in New York.
She prizes her intellect so it comes with no amount of shock and horror when minor memory slippages reveal that Alice has hereditary early-onset Alzheimer’s directly linked to three different genetic markers. (This seems like a bit of Hollywood melodrama but I looked it up and it’s true.) At age 50 Alice must contend with the reality that she’s rapidly declining into dementia. Her ability to retain some semblance of routine and comfort is quickly whittled away as she gets lost in the fog of dropped words and memories.
There are some rumblings from the family regarding Alice’s future though they’re wisely pushed to the background. The film comes dangerously close to overselling a fantasy of WASP-ish nobility and privilege tainted by a perfectly metaphorical illness (a linguistics professor who loses her speech) and the empty carefully curated display of symptoms that ensue. Alice might get confused in her own home while looking for the bathroom peeing her pants in the process but she can still jog over to her favourite frogurt joint for a treat.
Visually the film isn’t very distinguished resembling something between a made-for-TV drama and yet another maudlin Nicholas Sparks adaptation (Nights in Rodanthe The Notebook). And if it weren’t for Moore’s convincing performance there’d be little to recommend it. Take her out and all you’re left with is an uninspiring series of spats between spoiled siblings and mature Baby Boomer love adorned with khakis chunky sweaters and snuggly cuddles on the beach.
Many assume that Moore is guaranteed to win this year’s Best Leading Actress Oscar for her performance and for those who care about such useless things they’re probably correct. The Oscars love convincing portraits of disability and massive gains and losses in weight. Mercifully despite the studied albeit correct ticks and silences of a late-term dementia sufferer Moore plays things as honestly as she can. It’s riveting and scary all the more so as her decline has only one inevitable outcome despite the soft focus lovey-dovey goo spreading out around her.
Still Alice is the sort of movie that’s more obligatory exercise than art. Caregivers and people with older parents will go and see it with a knowing nod stacking her experiences and expectations of the realities of dementia against their own. Moore’s performance is strong enough to withstand the scrutiny textbook perfect while just idiosyncratic enough to work as drama. If the most important thing the film does is display the real-life horrors of having your mind erased then Still Alice succeeds. The rest of us can only wince and hope we’ll be spared knowing full well that some of us won’t.
STILL ALICE directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland starring Julianne Moore Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart opens on Friday February 13.
