New film about Alzheimer’s, “Still Alice,” receives critical praise for its realism

Of interest to those with a loved one or friend with Alzheimer’s is a new movie featuring actress Julianna Moore as Alice Howland, a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words.

Based on Lisa Genova’s novel of the same name, Still Alice follows the deterioration of the 50-year-old Columbia linguistics professor who learns she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Along with her husband and three children, she must endure a cruel and absurd ordeal that has no real chance of growing easier as she slides from a witty, intelligent, capable adult into a fragile and confused shadow of her former self, a review in The New York Times states.
“One of the tragedies of Alzheimer’s for the friends and family of the afflicted person is that the sufferer seems present and absent at the same time,” says the review by A.O. Scott.

Still Alice examines both the philosophical and emotional aspects of this paradoxical situation, and the principal vehicle for the inquiry is Moore’s exquisitely nuanced performance. From the early scenes, when brief memory lapses signal that something is wrong, through the subsequent deterioration of her cognitive ability, she conveys both the collapse of Alice’s inner world and the panic it causes.”

To see a trailer of the film visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrXrZ5iiR0o

Julianne Moore received a Golden Globe Award for her performance recently.
Still Alice is set to open in theatres nationwide on Jan. 16.