Still Alice

Still Alice is a 2014 American drama film written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland and based on the 2007 novel by Lisa Genova. It stars Julianne Moore as Alice Howland, a linguistics professor diagnosed with familial Alzheimer’s disease shortly after her 50th birthday. Alec Baldwin plays her husband, John, and Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, and Hunter Parrish play her children.

Glatzer and Westmoreland were approached by Lex Lutzus and James Brown to adapt Genova’s novel in 2011, when Glatzer had just been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Moore was their first choice for the lead role. She researched Alzheimer’s disease for months to prepare for the role. The film was shot in New York in March 2014, with a budget of $4 million.

Still Alice had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2014. It was one of several films stolen in the Sony Pictures hack incident and leaked online on November 27, 2014. The film was released theatrically on January 16, 2015, and grossed $43.9 million at the international box office. It received positive reviews, with praise for Moore’s performance which won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Actress. She dedicated her Academy Award win to Glatzer, who died from ALS in March 2015. The film was included among the year’s top ten independent films by the National Board of Review.

Plot[edit]

Alice Howland, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, celebrates her 50th birthday with her physician husband John and their three adult children. After she forgets a word during a lecture and becomes lost during a jog on campus, Alice’s doctor diagnoses her with early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease. Alice’s elder daughter, Anna, and son, Tom, take a genetic test to find out if they will develop the disease: Anna’s test gives a positive result, while Tom’s is negative. Alice’s younger daughter Lydia, an aspiring actress, decides not to be tested.

As Alice’s memory begins to fade, she daydreams of her mother and sister, who died in a car crash when she was a teenager. She memorizes words and sets a series of personal questions on her phone, which she answers every morning. She hides sleeping pills in her room, and records a video message instructing her future self to end her own life by overdosing on the pills when she can no longer answer the personal questions. As her disease advances, she becomes unable to give focused lectures and loses her job. She also becomes lost searching for the bathroom in her own vacation home and does not recognize Lydia after seeing her perform in a play.

John is offered a job at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Alice asks him to postpone accepting the job, but he feels this is impossible. At her doctor’s suggestion, Alice delivers a speech at an Alzheimer’s conference about her experience with the disease, using a highlighter to remind herself which parts of the speech she has already spoken, and receives a standing ovation.

Alice begins to have difficulty answering the questions on her phone. At one point, she loses the phone and becomes distressed; John finds it a month later in the freezer, but Alice thinks it has only been missing for a day.

After a video call with Lydia, Alice inadvertently opens the video with the suicide instructions. With some difficulty, she finds the pills and is about to swallow them, but when she is interrupted by the arrival of her caregiver, she drops the pills on the floor and forgets what she was doing.

John, unable to watch his wife continue to deteriorate, moves to Minnesota. Lydia, who has been living in California, moves back home to care for Alice. Lydia reads her a section of the play Angels in America and asks her what she thinks it is about. Alice, now barely able to speak, responds with a single word: “love.”

Cast[edit]