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(Spoiler warning for the film's ending)
I've found, as I get older, that it takes increasingly less to make me cry at movies – my theory being that the accumulation of real life experience correlates to an empathy for fictionalised narratives to which we couldn’t previously relate. Having said that, there are still only a handful of films I’d describe as truly devastating, and those that fit the description generally share one of two themes. The first is animals – my love thereof being no great secret. (A friend once asked if I wanted to rent Hachi, and I responded by saying that I wasn’t in the mood: the truth being that a) films where the animal protagonists don’t survive past the end credits utterly destroy me and b) I’d teared up just watching the trailer two days earlier.) The second – more human – theme is that of mothers.
As the product of a single-parent household, there are few things that offend me more than the notion that a child needs two parents (of either gender) for healthy development, and, once I’d reached an age where the option became available to me, I ceased contact with my father altogether. In consequence of having been raised by mum alone, however, we have a closeness for which I am unendingly grateful; and trading an additional parent for the woman who remains one of my favourite people in the world is an exchange I would make time and time again. (Indeed, half the arguments we had growing up were, upon reflection, a consequence of us being more or less the same person: my strong-mindedness (read: stubbornness) and self-assurance (/inability to admit when I’m wrong) being among the more charming traits I’ve inherited.)
Now, going into Still Alice last week, I had high expectations. I’m a long-time fan of Julianne Moore, and knew she’d secured the Oscar for Best Actress before the film had even premiered here in the UK (an accolade I chose to have faith in despite Patricia Arquette winning Best Supporting for Boyhood, which I consider a feat of technical filmmaking vs. acting or storytelling). I was not, however, prepared for the degree to which the film moved me, and as people slowly filed out of the cinema around us, it was all I could to do stay seated throughout the end credits until I could recover enough to stop crying.
The film’s theme is, of course, grave – the subject of early-onset Alzheimer’s is hardly the makings of a light-hearted comedy. Dr. Alice Howland (played to devastating effect by Moore) is a linguistics professor who, she tells us, has “always been so defined by my intellect, my language, my articulation, and now sometimes I can see the words hanging in front of me and I can’t reach them and I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what I’m going to lose next.” It’s a disease that strips Alice of the traits that form the very basis of her self-identity. This loss of her sense of self – and the bitter irony that the accelerated decline in Alice’s condition owes, in part, to her erstwhile superior intellect – is difficult to watch: scenes of Alice pre-emptively visiting a nursing home and seeing the fate that awaits her reflected in people vastly beyond her age; of the shame she feels after failing to find the bathroom in her own home; the emotional breakdown when she finally reveals her condition to her husband, and sobs that “it feels like my brain is fucking dying. And everything I’ve worked for in my entire life is going. It’s all going.” It’s heartbreaking.
But the true heart of the movie lies, for me, in Alice’s relationship with her youngest daughter, Lydia (played by Kristen Stewart in a role for which the internet at large probably owes her a collective apology after the Twilight series). Though their relationship is, at times, strained (foremost by Alice’s misgivings over Lydia’s choice of an acting career without a solid basis in education) the bond they ultimately develop over the course of the movie is a beautiful one; the child she least understands becoming the one who understands her most. The film’s final scene is, at face value, devastating – Lydia reads to Alice from a play they had discussed months earlier while her mother was still in command of her faculties, and Alice – finally in the full grip of her condition – responds seemingly incomprehensibly. But it contains within it an echo of the speech the once-brilliant Alice gave in the film’s opening moments, where she noted that, “Most children speak and understand their mother tongue before they turn four, without lessons, homework, or much in the way of feedback. How do they accomplish this remarkable feat? Well this is a question that has interested scientists at least since Charles Darwin kept a diary of the early language of his infant son. He observed, ‘Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children.’”
After Lydia has finished reading, she asks her mother, “Hey, did you like that? What I just read, did you like it? Wh-what…what was it about?”
“Love,” Alice answers.
And though her mother has been reduced to a state where she can only communicate through childlike babble, we feel that Alice can still comprehend – on some level – Lydia’s devotion to her. “Yeah, mom,” she responds. “It was about love.”
In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, Still Alice could easily have been a schmaltzy, Lifetime Movie affair like My Sister’s Keeper or The Notebook – reliant on musical cues and manipulative sentimentality to tell the viewer where and when to feel. Still Alice favours a quiet dignity, like that of its protagonist, and of the film’s co-writer and director, Richard Glatzer, who made this movie – ultimately to be his last – whilst battling motor neuron disease. The film’s lasting message is of endurance, even in the face of inevitability — and of love.
(Dundee, 2014)
She’s growing to be one of the leading favourites for the Best Actress Oscar and now film fans can witness the extraordinary Julianne Moore in the first trailer for Sony Pictures Classics forthcoming drama STILL ALICE. The film, based on the heartbreaking novel Lisa Genova, is written and...
I designed the original book cover for Lisa Genova's Still Alice. The blue butterfly concept went on live both in the book and in the numerous additional covers. So fun to see that the first clip from the movie is a one-minute scene about butterflies too in the movie with Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, and Kristen Stewart!
© Christopher Seufert Photography
Although this is toted as a fictional book all aspects are true to taste so to speak, the medical diagnosis, progression, drug treatments, etc. with the exception of a fictional drug used in a clinical trial in this book, which in the postscipt the author notes this and states there are other drugs in trial within the same guidelines.
With all that being said, this is a truly heatbreaking and scary story of a woman who on the verge of turning 50 discovers she has early onset Alzeimers. The timeline of this book spans a two year period which details the very rapid decline of someone who was intellectually stellar to a state of near complete unknowingness.
What really made it a page turner for me is that it could happen to any of us without prejudice! It made you think what would I do? How would I handle the news?
The main character decided that she has a fail safe way of keeping her fate in her hands. Knowing she didn't want to live with this disease in it's progressed stages she sets herself up with a simple quiz that she took daily. She programmed her BlackBerry for a reminder to ask 5 questions with the instruction if she ever had difficulty answering them, to go to her computer, open the file named Butterfly and follow the instructions completely. Not wanting to give any more of the story away, I will leave it at that.
Highly recommend this book too! Loved it (despite the less that happy topic).
"Adapted from the eponymous book by Lisa Genova, and directed by Dana Standel. Translated into Hebrew by Adi Ginzberg-Hirsh. Performed by Nina Kotler.
Alice is 48 years old, leading a full and active life as a university professor, wife, and mother of three, when she receives a life-altering diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Now she must fight to retain her sense of self against all odds."
See more here:
Author Lisa Genova at the premiere for the play based on her New York Times Best Selling novel Still Alice.
Chicago, IL
© Christopher Seufert Photography
Lisa Genova with Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland, Julianne Moore, Kate Bosworth and Kristen Stewart.
Lisa Genova's breakthrough New York Times Best Seller, now in production as a movie with Alec Baldwin, Julianne Moore, Kate Bosworth, and Kristen Stewart.
© Christopher Seufert Photography
Lisa Genova with Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland, producers Elizabeth Gelfand Stearns, James Brown and Maria Shriver
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - December 31 - Lisa Genova attends ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION Presents Part The Cloud 2015 Luncheon January 27th 2015 at US in San Francisco, CA Photo - Drew Altizer
The prospective cover for my wife's second book, Left Neglected. She's the author of the current NY Times Best Seller Still Alice.
©Christopher Seufert Photography
There are very few books that have an everlasting effect on me. I usually remember them all, but every now and then I read one that stays with me afterwards for a very long time. This is one of them. Still Alice a beautifully written book about one woman's battle with early onset Alzheimer's Disease. Alice is able to pull you into her world and makes you see what she does and makes you feel what she feels. I don't know how anyone could read this and not feel apart of Alice herself. I won't lie, but it is a pretty scary feeling. When she panicked I could feel it. It is such a heart wrenching story that I don't recommend reading it unless you are in the right frame of mind. With that said here is a synopisis of Still Alice from the Still Alice website:
Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...
Lisa Genova is such an awesome author. I highly recommemd this book.
Submitted for June's TMSH # 5 - Summer reading
goo.gl/k7X3o2 www.moviesteve.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/still-alice... #AlecBaldwin, #AlzheimerS, #HunterParrish, #JulianneMoore, #KateBosworth, #KristenStewart, #RichardGlatzer, #StillAlice, #WashWestmoreland
A super confident woman, top of her game, a linguistics professor, one day discovers herself grasping for a word while she’s giving a lecture. This being the movies, where a cough in one scene leads to coughing up blood in the next, we automatically suspect she’s got Alzheimer’s. Th...
Whiplash - Alternative Movie Poster
Original illustration - posters, prints and many other products available at:
I shot this head shot for my wife's book, Still Alice, about early-onset Alzheimer's Disease, and we just found out that it'll be #5 on the NY Times Best Seller List for Fiction on Jan. 25th. Pretty wild, after originally self publishing it and selling it out of the trunk of her car. She got a good review in the Boston Globe and it pretty much took off from there. Makeup by Lisa George and production assistance by Chris Kolb.
© Christopher Seufert Photography
Frankie's eye swirls behind the title...
movie and book about early onset Alzheimer's disease were both informative and well done...
Today we’re rounding up the pick of the week’s US and/or UK cinematic releases to see what’s worth a visit to the local multiplex, what’s probably best left to a later viewing at home and what’s not worth wasting your precious time at all… Love it – or leave it?
THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD H...
The Elephant Man - Alternative Movie Poster
Original illustration - posters, prints and many other products available at:
Final cover design for the Brazilian version of Still Alice by New York Times Best Selling Author Lisa Genova.