{"id":1281,"date":"2017-09-06T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/2017\/09\/still-alice\/"},"modified":"2018-06-30T09:52:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T13:52:31","slug":"still-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2017\/09\/still-alice\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Alice"},"content":{"rendered":"

2014, USA, 101 min.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Still Alice<\/em> tracks a family\u2019s changing dynamics after a life-shattering diagnosis and serves as a showcase for Julianne Moore, whose beautiful, freshly Oscar-winning work allows us to see her family\u2019s struggles as part of the title character\u2019s long, losing battle with herself. The movie proceeds at an uncomfortably languid pace until the end, when we\u2019re shaken.<\/p>\n

Fifty-year-old Alice Howland (Moore) is the apotheosis of having-it-all, the kind of woman who looks immaculate whether she\u2019s presenting research at a convention, jogging through Columbia University\u2019s campus or cooking a massive Christmas dinner in a kitchen out of Architectural Digest<\/em>. Family follows suit, from her ruggedly handsome scientist husband, John (Alec Baldwin), to two of her adult children, who look like they\u2019ve been carved out of ivory. Her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), doesn\u2019t fit that mold in looks, attire or occupation. She\u2019s a struggling actress who has eschewed college, a fact her mother\u2014a renowned linguistics expert\u2014can recite even as her brain deteriorates. <\/p>\n

Alice\u2019s struggle with early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s reveals someone fighting to maintain what becomes more of a fa\u00e7ade with each passing day. (Alice\u2019s neurologist observes that she has become quite resourceful at masking the symptoms.) Working from Lisa Genova\u2019s novel of the same name (2007), director-writer Richard Glatzer and co-director Wash Westmoreland ease us into Alice\u2019s reality bit by bit, which gives the proceedings an empathetic resonance. There\u2019s no grandstanding here. Moore\u2019s restraint\u2014whether it\u2019s her resigned annoyance that her moisturizer is in the refrigerator or fumbling for words that evaporate as she speaks\u2014comes from a place of emotional turmoil. Alice\u2019s losses are inevitable, yet still painful. When Alice and John swap giggly, kissy memories at their summer home, she remarks that things may be different next year. A little later, after forgetting where the bathroom is, she stands helplessly in her own urine. <\/p>\n

Life cannot stay the same. As Alice\u2019s condition worsens, she and Lydia grow closer while the rest of the family, involved in their glittering careers and unblemished lives, shies away. Lydia\u2019s increased interest feels shoehorned, but it\u2019s not an unwelcome development. Stewart, who holds her own with Moore, lowers Lydia\u2019s feral frustration from the earlier scenes, and we come to understand the factors that led Lydia to head in a different direction: the career-obsessed father, the cold sister (Kate Bosworth). Lydia finds the person behind the do-it-all icon who is and always will be her mother, the one who possibly used achievement to mask her own sadness.<\/p>\n

Still Alice <\/em>has no glamour or happy ending or miracle cure, just people succeeding and failing to deal with a major change scribbled into the Upper West Side storybook. Alice\u2019s story will continue, just not in the way everyone expected. There\u2019s a reason why the movie\u2019s big speech is at the halfway point. Part of life, regardless of age, is sticking around after the applause ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This film tracks a family\u2019s changing dynamics after a life-shattering diagnosis and serves as a showcase for Julianne Moore.<\/p>\n

Read more Still Alice<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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