Every single person in the audience was an elderly woman, when I went to see this movie. And I think all of us were scared to death because according to statistics your risk of getting Alzheimer really progresses after the age of 65.
And here comes Hollywood! The person affected by Alzheimer in the movie is not an elderly woman, but a beautiful woman Alice, played by Julianne Moore, who just turned 50. Only a tiny percentage gets Alzheimer so early! A woman ,who seems to accept that terrible disease without any drama and while supposedly her condition deteriorated rapidly, she is still able to give a speech on Alzheimer without even once glancing at her painfully prepared notes, which we see her earlier tracing word by word with a highlighter. But once on stage, miracle over miracle she never looses eye contact with the audience.
The kind of Alzheimer she got, we learn from her neurologist, is passed on from generation to generation and again without any drama her three children who are at high risk to have inherited the disease, accept the fact that they- in one case has the gene,- in the second case does not have the gene and- in the third case the daughter chooses not to find out. Wow, what a well balanced family.
The whole family seems somehow to be detached from the fact that the wife and mother has a life-threatening disease. Nobody creates a safety system to protect Alice from getting lost or help her create crutches to deal with the memory problem. Nobody really seems to care and they all just go on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Neither husband (Alec Baldwin) nor any of the children seem to spend any time with Alice after she had to give up her teaching job. Only at the very end when her mind is already completely gone, one daughter comes to take care of her.
And following the film nothing really dramatic happens
The only a little bit embarrassing situation shown is when Alice wets her pants because she cannot remember where the bathroom is.
And the only moment of upset is when she looses her iphone.
I had more drama in my life with losing keys or forgetting appointments or names.And everything I have seen so far meeting people with Alzheimer was not pretty.
Like some other reviewers I found the movie a too sanitized outlook on one of the most frightening diseases of our time. The prognosis for the next decades is mind-boggling as people get older and the probability of them (especially women)getting Alzheimer is as big a reality, as the one that most men will get prostate cancer the older they get.
Everybody who wishes to die of old age should think again. As long as they have not found a cure, to be old and do not remember who you are is not something to thrive for.
The title Still Alice should have a question mark. And the answer is no. At the end she is just a shell, nobody home. I can understand that she wanted to commit suicide, you want to pull the plug before you are a complete vegetable.
Watching the final credits I saw that one of the producers was Maria Shriver, whose father suffered from Alzheimer too.I wonder if her experience with her father was so sanitized. Well, it certainly helps if you are rich and can hire people, who take care of the patient and the problems related with Alzheimer. But for those, who cannot afford it, the outlook is dire.
The film left me unsatisfied. Contrary to the movie "Iris" with Judi Dench and Kate Winslet where we get a clear picture of the patient before and after she was diagnosed, Still Alice lacked depth and during the whole film I could not forget that I was watching Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin and some other actors. I was watching Hollywood, not a disaster called Alzheimer.
And here comes Hollywood! The person affected by Alzheimer in the movie is not an elderly woman, but a beautiful woman Alice, played by Julianne Moore, who just turned 50. Only a tiny percentage gets Alzheimer so early! A woman ,who seems to accept that terrible disease without any drama and while supposedly her condition deteriorated rapidly, she is still able to give a speech on Alzheimer without even once glancing at her painfully prepared notes, which we see her earlier tracing word by word with a highlighter. But once on stage, miracle over miracle she never looses eye contact with the audience.
The kind of Alzheimer she got, we learn from her neurologist, is passed on from generation to generation and again without any drama her three children who are at high risk to have inherited the disease, accept the fact that they- in one case has the gene,- in the second case does not have the gene and- in the third case the daughter chooses not to find out. Wow, what a well balanced family.
The whole family seems somehow to be detached from the fact that the wife and mother has a life-threatening disease. Nobody creates a safety system to protect Alice from getting lost or help her create crutches to deal with the memory problem. Nobody really seems to care and they all just go on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Neither husband (Alec Baldwin) nor any of the children seem to spend any time with Alice after she had to give up her teaching job. Only at the very end when her mind is already completely gone, one daughter comes to take care of her.
And following the film nothing really dramatic happens
The only a little bit embarrassing situation shown is when Alice wets her pants because she cannot remember where the bathroom is.
And the only moment of upset is when she looses her iphone.
I had more drama in my life with losing keys or forgetting appointments or names.And everything I have seen so far meeting people with Alzheimer was not pretty.
Like some other reviewers I found the movie a too sanitized outlook on one of the most frightening diseases of our time. The prognosis for the next decades is mind-boggling as people get older and the probability of them (especially women)getting Alzheimer is as big a reality, as the one that most men will get prostate cancer the older they get.
Everybody who wishes to die of old age should think again. As long as they have not found a cure, to be old and do not remember who you are is not something to thrive for.
The title Still Alice should have a question mark. And the answer is no. At the end she is just a shell, nobody home. I can understand that she wanted to commit suicide, you want to pull the plug before you are a complete vegetable.
Watching the final credits I saw that one of the producers was Maria Shriver, whose father suffered from Alzheimer too.I wonder if her experience with her father was so sanitized. Well, it certainly helps if you are rich and can hire people, who take care of the patient and the problems related with Alzheimer. But for those, who cannot afford it, the outlook is dire.
The film left me unsatisfied. Contrary to the movie "Iris" with Judi Dench and Kate Winslet where we get a clear picture of the patient before and after she was diagnosed, Still Alice lacked depth and during the whole film I could not forget that I was watching Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin and some other actors. I was watching Hollywood, not a disaster called Alzheimer.