Still Alice, still human

by Thiranjala Weerasinghe

The theme of disease affecting mental and psychological well-being, is not one preferred by many movie-makers.

Such a task is not only challenging but definitely contains a risk involving its reception among audiences. Even the few movies, narrating a story of an individual afflicted with a disease-mental or physical- or a terminal illness, are often projected from a perspective of a loved one, a family member or a close friend.

We hardly get to see the fragile and crumbling world of the one afflicted with the disease and subsequently fail to gain a glimpse of their struggles and hopes for a meaningful life. ‘Still Alice’ a phenomenal adaptation of the book by Lisa Genova fills this void in the film industry.

The story of Alice Howland is definitely an intense narrative loaded with human struggle, helplessness and longing for connectedness and meaning. It's a story more realistic and one that touches the deepest most being of our selves.

Complexities

The personal struggles of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have enabled them to understand Genova’s novel with all its complexities, as it becomes a momentous test of identity and meaningful living. In 2011 Richard Glatzer was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better know as ALS, which has limited his capacity for speech only through an app.

In several interviews given to the media, Wash Westmoreland recalls how devastating the disease had been for both of them. Such diseases not only limit one’s autonomy but also affect the very core of life. This adaptation and direction of the film, undoubtedly, has given life to Genova’s novel unparalleled to several other such adaptations in the industry.

Julianne Moore, nominated for the 87th Academy Awards to be held today as the ‘best actor in a leading role’ for her tremendous performance in ‘Still Alice’, deserves to win her first Oscar. The performance, compact with intense emotions also demands skills in handling one’s body, facial expressions and eye movements.

Throughout the film, I was engrossed in the facial features of Moore from her luminous and joyful expressions to the ones characterised by frustration, anguish and loss. Moore’s display of artistic brilliance in integrating all these elements in her performance will become a guidebook for the younger generation as well as one of the hallmark performances of her career.

Plot

The film follows a straight trajectory with an uncomplicated plot, leading us through one of the cruelest neurological diseases affecting human life. Nevertheless, it does not excessively border on anger, despair and negativity but effectively depicts Alice’s struggle and helplessness.

This emphasis is definitely a call to comprehend the dimension of human struggle not with the centrality of anger, despair but hope towards a meaningful future.

It is this simplicity coupled with the realistic narration that has translated this work of art into a shared experience of people around the globe.

Even those diagnosed with several types of diseases and mental health issues have come forward to reveal how related they felt towards the film and most importantly the life of Alice Howland.

Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a successful Columbia University linguistics professor happily married to John Howland (Alec Baldwin) with three grown children Ana (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart).

Alice’s world appears to be a perfect one with love, joy and tremendous success in an academic career. Alice is an internationally renowned scholar whose book ‘From Neurons to Nouns’ has been widely ready and appreciated.

While John is a research physician on the verge of a career breakthrough, the three children are also more or less settled in life. However, the perfectly knit world of Alice begins to crumble with the diagnose of early onset of familial Alzheimer’s disease. The news shatters Alice and breaks the hearts of John and the three children.

The family is further devastated by the knowledge of the type of Alzheimer’s, which is associated with a genetic mutation with a fifty-percent chance of passing the mutated gene to one’s offspring.

Two polarities

The other characters, especially John and Lydia,play a significant role in the film. John’s character remains one of the hardest to understand.

He is characterised by two polarities: being a loving husband who adores his wife but at the same time is somewhat disconnected, distanced and detached from the struggle Alice go through. At the first instance, John finds it difficult, or rather refuses to believe in the diagnosis.

Although he remains a protective, caring and loving husband throughout, he often fails to understand the predicament of Alice. This is characterised in his question to Alice (while eating ice-cream at the parlour), “Do you still want to be here?” during the latter part of the movie when Alice could hardly remember things.

Lydia, initially bratty, is a girl who disagrees with her mom’s wish in perusing a college education. She is somewhat an unfit in a family of predominant careerists. Her love for theatre and the longing for independence and autonomy becomes a strong thread that binds Alice to her family and the world at large. In the last scene, which is heart warming, Lydia reads a passage from ‘Angels in America’ to Alice, who not only fails to understand its content but finds it difficult to speak as well.

Although Lydia’s narration had become a mere collation of sounds for Alice, she recognises ‘love’ as the basis of it. And it is this love that has bound every fragmented part of her life and world at large.

Passionate plea

During the her speech at the Alzheimer’s Association, Alice makes a passionate plea to people not to see her as someone suffering, but rather struggling to remain connected to the loved ones around her and most importantly to herself. It’s her struggle to master what the poet Elizabeth Bishop called ‘the art of losing.’

She has to let go so much in her life, even to the extent of her own self: a career that she had toiled for a lifetime through hardships, her intellectual capacities and so much of fond memories close to her heart, her autonomy as she is even require assistance in dressing, her family which loves dearly as she even forgets the names of her children and her relevance to the world that she observe around her.

The words of her doctor “With familial early-onset, things can go fast. And actually, with people who have a high level of education, things can go faster,” notes the rapidity with which the world around her and her own self becomes alien, unable to comprehend its meaning, purpose and relatedness.

Still Alice demands introspection into the societal attitudes and beliefs on mental health issues. It is true that people prefer to suffer physically even with a terminal illness such as cancer, as Alice tells John, but fear the very thought of mental diseases.

It’s a taboo in places such as Sri Lanka and most South Asian countries where mental health issues are not given a priority and much less government interest.

People are discouraged from obtaining expert psychological aid and counselling.

Some consider it to be too degrading to seek the help of a psychologist or a psychiatrist. We are too quick to segregate and confine those who suffer mentally and emotionally without ever being sensitive to their struggle.