The final TIFF feature review. Whew, 25 films screened and written up. And all by closing night! Please give me a round of applause in the comments. I've never been this successful at managing a festival and comments are the only way I know you're appreciating it.
When we first meet Dr Alice Howland in this fine film adapated from the bestseller by Lisa Genova, she is celebrating her 50th birthday. She's happily married to Dr. John Howland (Alec Baldwin) with three grown children whom she adores though she isn't exactly a perfect mother or wife, at least as defined by your typical movie woman, in which case she'd be inordinately obsessed with her husband and children's particulars. In fact, she almost entirely defines herself by her own career and skills (imagine that!) as a respected linguistics professor. She values articulate communication and higher education and maybe she isn't super imaginative about other forms of expression. In fact, she's downright dismissive about her youngest daughter Lydia's (Kristen Stewart) interest in acting. She gives her a continual hard time about her education and career and is frustratingly absent from all of Lydia's minor triumphs.
Kristen Stewart is making good choices, upping her game by way of great costars
Alice forgets her train of thought and words here and there but if we weren't watching a movie this might come across as normal slips and at first she takes them as such. But on an evening run she seems to lose her way and her wits entirely once she reaches her college, hyperventilating like a Carol White in a garage -- [safe] (1995) reference coming at'cha. It can't be helped and it's a good sign -- the peripheries of the space around her eerily white and out of focus. At this point she can no longer deny it and sees a doctor fearing a brain tumor. The news is actually much worse: early onset Alzheimers.
From that point forward it's alternating tears, clear-eyed determination (video and text instructions Alice records for herself are at first curious and then harrowing in their matter-of-factness with a tremendously strong payoff late in the film), and a very rapid decline aided in part by quick time jumps in the editing. (Alzheimers has to be one of the most vicious cleverly evil diseases ever and it turns out those with the most active brains lose their mental capacity and memories even more quickly -- at least that's what I think I learned through my stunned wide-eyed horror at watching my Julianne get progressively spacier.)
30 ROCK reunion alert! Baldwin ♥ MooreStill Alice is confidently told and acted and though Julianne Moore is the main attraction - as well she should be: one line reading of "I have Alzheimers" is crazy brilliant in a throwaway funny way -- the ensemble gets more attention than you might think. That's true particularly of Lydia with whom Alice has the most difficult but actually closest relationship. Alice's attempts to connect with her daughter through a play (Angels in America as it turns out) which is clearly way beyond her mental capacity at that stage in her decline is sweetly tragic. Glatzer and Westmoreland watch all of this with careful attention but always in a low-key slice of life way. That subdued observation might limit Still Alice's operatic and tear-jerking potential as a story about tragic identity loss but it heightens its sensitivity as a compassionate film guide to readjusting expectations and reaching for tiny triumphs in the face of an inexplicably cruel and degenerative illness.
Alice is rapidly losing Alice and one day she'll be gone completely, a stranger in the mirror. But with this touching feature, Julianne Moore beautifully reclaims Julianne Moore. An Oscar run can't be far behind.
the best scene in Still Alice. I shan't spoil it for you.
Grade: B+
Oscar Chances: a Best Actress nomination should lock up the moment this reaches movie theaters and thus becomes eligible. It's the type of low key low budget indie that is most likely to be reduced in the awards imagination to simply a baity hook for its Oscar-free star to finally catch one. But if it goes over well in limited release (and it might) we could theoretically see some excitement around Alec Baldwin or Kristen Stewart in support or the Adapted Screenplay.
P.S. Yes, I've updated my Best Actress Predictions Chart accordingly! The rest of the charts will follow this week.
P.P.S. Full Disclosure: In the late 90s and early 00s I was good online friends with Richard Glatzer who co-directed and co-wrote this film with his partner Wash Westmoreland. I met Richard in person for the first time when he was with Julianne Moore's group at a special screening of Far From Heaven the first time I met her in Los Angeles, 12 years back. Suffice it to say it's a happy twist of fate that this was the surprise word of mouth success at TIFF an even bigger surprise to me (I wasn't aware of its existence somehow pre-fest) and with Julianne Moore as its buzzy leading lady no less!
P.P.P.S. 25 films, all reviewed! Alpha Order
1001 Grams
Behavior
Charlie's Country
Cub
The Farewell Party
Force Majeure
Foxcatcher
The Gate
The Imitation Game
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
Labyrinth of Lies
The Last Five Years
Life in a Fishbowl
A Little Chaos
Miss Julie
Mommy
The New Girlfriend
Out of Nature
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Sand Dollars
Song of the Sea
Still Alice
The Theory of Everything
Wild
Wild Tales