By Ellie-Louise Style
Still Alice has recently been released in the cinemas worldwide, and as it was International Woman’s Day I decided to give it a watch and review it.
To be honest I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing this movie, like I am with most movies, as I thought it was going to be quite slow paced affair, but I was wrong.
Straight away we were catapulted into displayed signs that Alice – the main character played by the superb Julianne Moore – was having early signs of the Alzheimer’s disease. You could see her condition deteriorating and getting worse throughout the movie.
I must say I couldn’t fault Moore’s acting, there’s no wonder why she won an Oscar and BAFTA for this role. Truth be told, the director could not have hired anyone better to represent the people who really live with Alzheimer’s disease. The actress helped the viewer understand how hard and destructing it can be to deal with this, not only for Alice, but for her family as well.
However, this film doesn’t just show you the simple stages of Alzheimer’s it shows you how it rapidly worsens the state of mind of the patient and the extremities of the disease, which unravelled in a very short space of time for our protagonist.
We hear Alice audibly describe the condition as if she can’t find herself, and she can see the “words hanging in front” of her, but she “can’t reach them”, and she doesn’t know what she’s “going to lose next”. I felt this gave the audience a greater understanding of what it is like to have this illness.
It is clear that this news of Alice’s illness takes a toll on her husband, played by the honest Alec Baldwin, and he isn’t very supportive towards her. However, her daughter Lydia, played by Kirsten Stewart, does attempt to help.
I didn’t think this role suited Kirsten Stewart very well. It wasn’t believable, and she came across as awkward but perhaps that is because I can’t picture her in anything else other than the Twilight Sagas.
I must say though the end of this movie was quite a disappointment, and it just seemed to cut off pretty much mid sentence, and left you hanging. It seemed like the ending had just disappeared, or they forgot to film it! It also leaves you questioning the film more, as you never find out what happened to Alice in the end.
Overall, some people might not think that Alzheimer’s can hit people at an early age, but this movie shows it can in very rare cases. The film gives the audience a great insight into what it is like living with Alzheimer’s, and how difficult the struggle can be.
Watch the trailer just below:
