Still Alice (2014) (English Language)

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Review

101min

Directors: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland

Cast: Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, , Alec Baldwin…and more

Writers : Lisa Genova , Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland

Julianne Moore’s Oscar-winning performance as a middle-aged accomplished professor of linguistics and family matriarch who is unexpectedly diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, as her family struggles to cope with her deteriorating condition Alice struggles to retain what is left of her true self in this poignant reflective drama.

As ‘Still Alice’ is finally released in the UK tomorrow British audiences can finally see what all the fuss was about Julianne Moore’s multiple award-winning performance and we must say the fuss is justified, Moore’s performance is hauntingly subtle and bare whilst maintaining a dignity that is often absent when dealing with the terrible effects of dementia.

Moore’s character quips in the film that she would “rather have cancer because at least people would wear pink ribbons and I would feel less ashamed”, the film does a good job of highlighting the indignities of the descent into dementia, this is aptly demonstrated by the tragic irony of a linguistics professor forgetting words and increasingly unable to express herself vocally.

This is as honest a portrayal of a family’s emotional and everyday struggles in dealing with mental illness as you will get from Hollywood, albeit an affluent family’s struggles, ‘Still Alice’ is not overly dramatic or tragic in any way but still more than powerful enough to make us worry every time we now forget something and anxious to check our family history.

After the success of ‘The Theory of Everything’ and with this film it seems that 2014 has been an important educational year for cinema in terms of depicting the nature of diseases that imprison the body or mind and the stigma that this creates with them in society.

A measured, sometimes touching but ultimately depressing film, ‘Still Alice‘ is nevertheless as candid a depiction of the struggle with dementia as you are likely to see coming out of tinseltown and worth the watch for Julianne Moore’s performance alone, hopefully might even encourage people to talk about dementia rather than brushing another social/human issue under the carpet.

‘Still Alice‘ is released tomorrow Friday the 6th in Cinemas across the UK.

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Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Awakenings (1990)

Robert De Niro stars as a catatonic and mentally incapable patient at a care home where a doctor played by the late Robin Williams introduces an experimental drug which may bring the patients out of their decades-long immobile state, but the success of the drug comes at a cost to everyone as once forgotten souls now find a haunting voice in this touching drama.

Directed by Penny Marshall and starring Robert De Niro, Robin Williams and Penelope Ann Miller among others.