Oscar Nominations
Best Lead Actress - Julianne Moore
Still Alice is not
a great movie. It barely even qualifies
as a good movie. There’s nothing wrong
with it per se, but the type of film it is feels like it belongs on the Lifetime channel as a Movie of the
Week. There are no real character arcs
or much in the way of cinematic artistry; any attempts to make interesting
statements through the medium come off as basic and ultimately inconsequential. This is a sad film about a woman suffering
from a disease, and the film serves its purpose in acting as a by-the-numbers terminal
illness sympathy-inducer that isn’t ambitious beyond its casting choices. And while big names like Kristen Stewart and
Alec Baldwin simply play versions of the same personas we’ve seen them adopt
time and again, Julianne Moore as the titular Alice delivers this film from the
depths of mediocrity into being a showcase for the range of her abilities.
Alice is a college linguistics professor who starts to
exhibit symptoms of forgetfulness, disorientation and confusion. She goes to see a neurologist and is
eventually diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, a rare form of the disease
that she learns was likely hereditary and may have been passed on to her
children. And that’s pretty much the
breadth of the film’s scope, as we watch Alice’s deterioration over time and
her family’s attempts to cope with the changes inherent in that. The plot is fairly typical, with the film’s
high point being in the culmination of a far-gone Alice discovering a video
from past self inducing her to commit suicide, but beyond that, there is little
in the way of dramatic tension or theming to push the story forward. The point is that Alzheimer’s is a bad thing,
and it is sad to watch someone’s mind be lost to it. Point made. The most creative thing the directors decide
to do with this concept is place surroundings that Alice cannot remember out of
the camera’s focus and use cuts to mask extreme passages of time, but this is
about as basic as cinematic symbolism gets and should only seem profound to the
theatrically illiterate.
The only thing that actually makes this film worth seeing is
Julianne Moore’s Oscar-nominated performance, and I can tell why the Academy latched
on to her. Moore subtly telegraphs her
disease from the film’s first scene, long before her character is ever
diagnosed, and the transformation she experiences feels gradual and
horrifying. She has her good days and
her bad days, and the way she jumps between the two while still portraying that
Alice is decidedly getting worse is simply masterful. For much of the film, she’s still the same
old Alice that we’ve come to know and admire for her intelligence and articulate
nature, but she gradually loses those pieces that have been the cornerstone of
her identity, and by the end of the film, it’s hard to tell if who we are
seeing is, in fact, still Alice. It’s a
great performance that deserves the Academy’s recognition.
However, other than Moore’s performance, the film feels
rather pedestrian and uninspired. I
wouldn’t have called it a bad film without Moore, but I certainly wouldn’t have
considered it noteworthy either.
Ultimately, this functions best as an actress’s showcase, and not much
else. If you’re interested in seeing
what the Oscar buzz is about, go ahead and see Still Alice. If you couldn’t
care less, then there really isn’t anything in this film here for you.
Can you think of another mediocre film saved by a great
performance? Leave your remembrances in
the comments below.
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