Still Alice is a film that attempts to answer this question. It takes a look at how people measure their lives in moments, which can slip away without warning. Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, who discovers at the age of fifty that she is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. For a woman whose vocation is language, semantics, the taxonomies of the mind, the looming prospect of a total mental disconnect is particularly appalling. What her neurologist calls her 'resourcefulness' in accounting for her memory deficiencies up until this point may even make her inevitable decline more rapid. Her ability to outwit herself must come to an abrupt end.
As always, Julianne Moore is a luminous on-screen presence. She elevates what could have been a maudlin and sentimental study of mental illness into something that has a bit more weight. In the early scenes at the hospital, she deftly captures the attitude an intellectual like Alice adopts towards any kind of exam: a steely competitiveness fuelled by a desire to impress. Her realisation that this is not a test she can hope to pass is a moment of sickening finality.
That is not to say that Still Alice is unbearably depressing. There is an undercurrent of quite dark humour that could have been better exploited. The occasions when Alice uses her Alzheimer's for the purposes of manipulation offer refreshing antidotes to the prevailing sense of deterioration. There are ways for a person who has lost so much to get back in the game. But the film quickly settles into a predictable and quite uninventive rhythm. It's not as hard to watch as it should be; nor is its emotional kick well earned. Everything feels far too sanitised: the glossy middle-class lifestyles; the nuclear family with the not very problematic 'problem' child; the milestones of crisis and catharsis. Perceptibly, we move away from the real horror and complexity of what is unfolding. Unless you count the very real horror of watching Kristen Stewart attempt a scene from Chekhov's Three Sisters. Someone, somewhere, must stop her.
It is highly likely that Moore will win an oscar for this performance, and it is absolutely impossible to begrudge her the success. She is one of the very best at what she does. Still Alice is not, however, up to the standard she sets. When the last word of a script is 'love,' you know the screenwriters have become lazy. A film committed to one woman's experience of loss should know better than to go for such easy victories.
