Still Alice

I had a rough childhood. Things happened to me that no child should have been exposed to. I was not raped or moslested, but was a bully victim in a much larger scale than the usual victim. Imagine being beaten with a baseball bat, kicked on while lying on the concrete, thrown out naked infront of people to humiliate me, the list never stops. What saved me was the love of my grandfather and my mother, who managed to support me through therapy sessions. After many years of pain, and trying to find my own way in life, i decided to help other people in health care. I could not change the past, but i could make the future better, for myself and knowing i can make people happy. There is a feeling hard to describe, how it feels to know you make someone happy, who can´t live without your help. It does not have to be anything big, sometimes small things matter more than big details. Thinking back since i began working in health care, i arranged christmas dinners, trips to Denmark, music concert visits for handicapped people that did not know what they could do with help. I gave them a chance to see a different view on life. Until this day, i still meet some of these people who i helped in my hometown Uddevalla and get a big hug. These memories of our trips and moments will always be in their memories. Even if i don´t do as much as i used to in these areas in these days, i travel a lot, to explore life. I also talk to disabled people in different countries, when some of them may ask me what language i speak, it is nice to connect to people in different situations. Speaking of travelling, could you imagine if you thought you know where you are, when in fact you have no idea ? We could all have memory problems, when we get older. In some cases it could be the disease known as Alzheimers. This is a diagnose that people worldwide struggle with, including their family members trying to help their loved ones, to live a normal life as possible. Still Alice is a new film, that tries to lift up the subject of Alzheimer and how it can affect us as humans. Julianne Moore is a very talented actor, and have proved herself in many great motion pictures. Directed by 2 directors ( unusual ), Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, have been praised by critics lately. Is this film another proof how great Julianne Moore is at finding great characters, or is this a story that should have been given to someone else ?

Dr. Alice Howland ( Julianne Moore ) is an practicing professor of linguistics. She is very respected both for her work, and for her way to teach university students in class. One day while she seems to forget small details, begin to become larger problems. She seek help to find out if she might have a tumour. It turns out that she is in the early stage of Alzheimer´s disease. Her husband John Howland ( Alec Baldwin ) is with her when she finds out her diagnose. They decide to let their 3 children find out the bad news. Her son Tom Howland ( Hunter Parrish ), and her daughters Anna Howland-Jones ( Kate Bosworth ) and Lydia Howland ( Kristen Stewart ) are all devastated by the news. Alice is worried about her youngest daughter Lydia, and try to make her inspired to get herself an education. Weeks pass, and Alice is changing, as she forget details and how to function in ordinary day life. Lydia tries to help her as much as possible, worried if something could happen when no one is around.

How do you live with Alzheimers, when you start to loose memory, and how does it affect your children and family ? The subject is nothing new, there are several films that take on the subject. The good news is that Still Alice is a very honest portrait about a woman, living with Alzheimers, and Julianne Moore is really good in the lead role. To act as a woman, living with her condition, is not easy to show in emotions. She manage to both show this with facial expressions, and in words. There are many families worldwide who have someone in the family, could be their parents, or grandparents, who loose their memory. It is a very emotional diagnose, and not easy to live with. Just image that there are people who don´t even know they have kids, or a partner? Still Alice tries to show us the progres, how a successfull woman suddenly change into a completely different person, than who she was before. No matter where we come from, our social status, or how well paid you are, anyone of us could be affected. The most important thing with an Alzheimers patient is to be there, even if he or she does not remember you. They might hurt themselves without understanding what they have done, or do other strange things that they usually don´t do. But if you make sure that person have all the help he or she needs, at least you know that the risk of something bad happening is much smaller. Our brain is a mystery, how we can change from one day, into a completely different person. One nice surprise is that Alec Baldwin is here, an actor i have followed through many years. This may not be his greatest performance so far, but i still feel he at least found a worthy character. Kristen Stewart have never been a great actor ( trying to forget her performances in awful Twilight films ), but she did do well in Welcome To Rileys. Here she does at least one of her better performances so far, especially in the scenes with Julianne Moore. To be honest, Julianne Moore is the reason why i found Still Alice to be a very emotional film. To see someone become sick, and trying to fight everyday against the disease is hard to watch. Especially when someone in your own family have been diagnosed. Some of the characters, may not feel very interesting. But it is the story around Alice, and how she tries to survive that makes this film work so well. I know that Julianne Moore have won several Awards for her perfomance in Still Alice, and that she is nominated for an Oscar Academy Award, if she wins it will be very important, especially for all people who live with Alzheimers. You should see this film, to get a view of how this serious disease is. Life is unfair many times, you just have to find a way to live as good as possible. I have not seen the previous films from directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, but with Still Alice i am curious to see if they have done other films in quality of this one. With this film they have proven themselves to be worthy the positive feedback from both audiences and critics.

Rating: DDDD