Moore has the Oscar.
Still Alice
Grade: A-
Directors: Richard Glatzer (The Last of Robin Hood), Wash Westmoreland (Quinceaera)
Screenplay: Glatzer, Westmoreland from Lisa Genova novel
Cast: Julianne Moore (Don John), Alec Baldwin (Blue Jasmine)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 101 min.
by John DeSando
“But this isn't fair.” Lydia Howland (Kristen Stewart)
Early-onset Alzheimer’s is definitely not fair for anyone, especially 40-year old Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), noted linguist on the Columbia faculty. Still Alice tracks Alice from the first manifestations of the disease to the sad peak of forgetfulness. While the screenplay lacks any moving narrative thrust, her performance is worth seeing, so good she is bound to win the best-actress Oscar.
In almost a Lifetime-Channel template, the opening scene has the professor forgetting a word or two in a lecture. Subsequently she can’t find the bathroom in the family cottage, while doting husband Dr. John Howland (a fine, non-sardonic Alec Baldwin) responds with love and understanding. No doubt she is in for a rocky rest of her life.
Besides the personal agony for her and her husband, a surprise awaits as the three children face the familial legacy of the disease. They handle their mother’s setback with assured courage, but their own genetic participation is problematic as they stand in for those who have failed to see how close they can be to the ugly rule of the disease.
Most involved with her mother is the contentious child, Lydia, an actress not fulfilling her mother’s expectations for a child pursuing traditionally rewarding and lucrative professions such as medicine and law. Though not taking a big stretch from the brooding Bella in Twilight, Stewart holds her own with Moore as a mature character torn between the tyrannical demands of her profession and a sense of responsibility for her deteriorating mother. It’s Moore’s movie in the end, a role that quietly moves to the inevitable while never going overboard with sentimentality.
Perhaps it’s best to treat the disease with dark humor:
“I think I'm getting a little bit of Alzheimer's. Just a little.”
Christopher Walken.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
