Last night, while contemplating about which movie I should watch for my last, I thought about the Oscars. Specifically, I thought about the amazing films that were produced this year that went on to win awards. Whiplash, Imitation Game, Theory of Everything, all these were important dramas about important people, ideas, and concepts. The struggle between human and health has been such a prevent motif in all of these movies.
Andrew battled anxiety as he strove to be the best drummer in New York City in Whiplash, Turing’s mental and physical health declined over time as his homosexuality was repressed by an ignorant society, and of course Stephen Hawking made ground-breaking discoveries in the face of ALS.
When, I was choosing a movie, I decided that I would watch “Still Alice,” since Julianne Moore won best actress, I thought it had to be good. I knew very little about the plot when I started. In fact, I only knew the title from the fact that she had one an Oscar for her portrayal of Alice’s character.
To clarify, Still Alice is a fictional movie based on a novel by author Lisa Genova. It tells the story of a distinguished linguistics professor at Columbia University who succumbs to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and while this specific story is fictional, there are probably hundreds of real people who share similarly sad story.
Firstly, the movie was amazing. The entire story was well-told and almost-painful to watch. Alice was a tragic character that was portrayed exceptionally well by Moore (of course she won the Oscar).
One particular thing I found about the film that made it so genuine, was the fact the entire family’s reaction to the diagnosis. A mixture of shock, anger, sadness, comfort, and resentment all sprung out of Alice’s disease. While they tried to continue with their lives as functional as possible, Alice’s grown children have a hard time coping with their mothers disease, especially since it is familial and the eldest daughter tested positive for the same gene mutation that causes Alzheimer’s. Towards the end of the film, reaching out to Alice was nearly impossible, yet the final scene gave some semblance of her coherence and indestructible notion of love.
Still Alice made me contemplate the nature of Alzheimer’s disease in society. No one in my family has ever had the disease, but watching the portrayal of its progression in Alice made me reflect upon it heavily. One heart-breaking moment came when Alice realized that all her years of hard work, the seminal textbooks she had written on language, her world-renown lectures, her extensive and ambitious research into human development, her articulation, her ambition, everything she cared about and worked for would vanish. That realization made this movie so real. She feared the lack of intelligibility over the death. She says, “I wish I had cancer,” because for her, the mind is above all else, and at least cancer is not, as she feels, humiliating in today’s society. There is a sort of hushed secrecy about early-onset Alzheimer’s, a degenerative disease that affects many professionals, caused by nothing more than bad genes, and Still Alice made me realize and admire the bravery of those afflicted with this disease in all its forms.
I would recommend Still Alice. It is dark and poignant and not something for the light-hearted. But for a story that makes you think about diseases, and their toll on human dignity, there are very few movies that compare.
