The Fundy Film Society

Still Alice

The always extraordinary Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right, A Single Man) rightfully earned an Oscar nomination for her revelatory performance as a renowned linguistics professor struggling with the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The fact that Dr. Alice Howland (Moore) is a lifelong student of language and communication may give her a powerful resource in her fight against mental decline, but it also means that she has a uniquely troubling understanding of what is to come. The poetic insight of Elizabeth Bishop—“The art of losing isn’t hard to master”—becomes a painful everyday reality for Alice, as losing her way in the streets of Manhattan soon leads to greater, far more dire losses. But even as Alice’s life begins to drop away in pieces around her, her condition provides an opportunity to regain something else she had lost: her relationship with her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria, On the Road), with whom she has never seen eye-to-eye.

While never neglecting the deleterious effects that Alice’s condition has on her relationships with her husband and three grown children, directing duo Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Last of Robin Hood, Quinceañera) stay focused on Alice’s subjective experience of the disease, detailing her slow decline—and the inventive tactics she deploys to combat it—with both keen precision and affecting empathy. With Moore’s marvellous turn complemented by impressive performances from a top supporting cast (which also includes Alec Baldwin and Kate Bosworth), Still Alice will break your heart—but it will also remind you that love is all around you, still.

“Ms. Moore shares her journey with boundless generosity. She makes you feel what it’s like to lose the wind beneath your wings.” (Rex Reed, New York Observer)

“Julianne Moore gives the performance of her career (no mean feat, given the strength of her previous work) in this heartbreaking yet life-affirming tale of a woman determined to hold onto her identity while under attack from a debilitating mental disease.” (David Hughes, Empire)

“The triumph of Still Alice is that it’s not about an illness; it’s about a person.” (Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice)