A new film released Feb. 13, 2015 called Still Alice is a heart breaking story starring some amazing actors. The main character Doctor Alice Howland, starring Julianne Moore, develops a rare early stage of Alzheimer’s Disease, and it causes drastic changes in her life and career.
Julianne Moore recently won an Oscar for the best female actress of 2015 for the movie. Alzheimer’s is a serious case of memory loss. Some of the main characters include Alice’s family, husband Dr. John Howland (Alec Baldwin), and their children, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), Anna (Kate Bosworth) and Tom (Hunter Parrish).
The movie begins in a beautiful rustic style home with the happy couple, Alice and John. Alice is a smart, full time college professor and is very successful in her career while her husband works as a full time businessman. At that moment, Anna and Tom are in college to be a nurse and a lawyer. But, the middle child, Lydia, is in California trying to pursue in her acting career. Lots of drama unfolds because of this.
Toward the middle of the movie, Alice starts to have symptoms of this disease. These scenes are my favorite, because I never knew what was going to happen next. After lots of these occurrences, she visits a doctor played by Stephen Kunken. He tells her that she has Alzheimer’s and as expected she is shocked. He husband doesn’t believe her at first.
A couple weeks after she finds out, she makes a video to herself on her laptop. Telling her to take a whole bottle of painkillers and to go to sleep, if she doesn’t remember three simple questions on her phone daily. No one finds out about this, but she was about to do the deed alone in her house before her aide came in the front door. She has several breakdowns through the midst of this disease that made me sob throughout the whole film. I never thought I could cry as much as I did. It was so emotional to see the family and her struggles throughout the entire film.
But, I disliked the ending of the movie. I was so disappointed and said “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” After getting several stares in the movie theatre, my friends and I left while being highly emotional. The movie makes everyone appreciate how lucky they truly are.
