Still Alice Film Review

Directed by Richard Glatzer and based on Lisa Genova's best selling book, Still Alice is the story of a successful women who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

I never really thought much about Alzheimer's before watching this film, but it has opened my eyes to how honesty destroying it is. In the film Alice( Julianne Moore) says she wishes she had cancer. This was the point in the film that really made me pause it and think about what that would be like. To be losing yourself. Memories, in a sense make you who you are, but to lose them, means you're losing yourself. To forget who you're family are or to walk in a room and forget what you were looking for, these simple things we all take for granted and never think about. But to have that happen every time you walk into a room? Or to not recognise anyone you meet? The world must be so lonely. Even as I write this, I'm not really writing about the movie, but Alzheimer's itself and the way the movie it's changed my thought process on certain things,

I hate how I didn't think about Alzheimer's before, because now that I know more about it, it makes the world unfair. Although the movie is all fiction, I can't help but feel that real people all around the world are going through exactly what the film illustrates.

I think this photo (above) sums the film up in its entirety. Julianne Moore plays the character so well that it pulled at my heart strings on too many occasions. She makes it so believable that we expect her to have experienced what it's really like. The struggle is so evident on her face. She performs so well, we feel emotionally attached to the character and sympathise will her trauma. The bonds between the characters, especially Alice and her husband (Alec Baldwin) and Alice and her youngest daughter (Kristen Stewart) is enough to punch you quite literally in the tear ducts especially in the scene when Alice performs a speech at the Alzheimer's Association. This shot shows alice looking Into a tv screen. The picture we see is unclear and blurry and dark, this reflects how the disease takes over your life and basically grounds you up, so that you're only snippets of who you used to be. You're not who you used to be, but you're still you. She's still her. She's still Alice.

The emotional connection between myself and the main characters shows how exquisite the performances of the crew was. Julianne Moore successfully conveys the struggle, the isolation, confusion and anger of what going through Alzheimer's feels like.

The scene above where Alice gets lost while on her daily jog is unsettling to say the least, from this close up of Alice the camera is focused on her whilst the background is blurred, it's almost as if we, as the audience can feel the struggle she is going through and how everything including the environment around her is confusing.

I can hardly find the words to summarise and point out why and what I liked about Still Alice because all in all it was greatly touching and it really tugs at the heart strings. Somehow they make you understand what it is like to live with Alzheimer's without having known anyone with Alzheimer's. No one can dislike this movie. I'm sorry but how could you dislike it!?
If I haven't persuaded you to watch it, here is the trailer: