For its final screening of the year, the Jasper Film Club is bringing in the big guns, with the Oscar-winning film Still Alice.
The movie follows Alice Howland, played by Julianne Moore, as she struggles to keep her life together in the grips of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Alice is a successful and intelligent linguist who’s shaken when she learns her diagnosis. Her disease is also hereditary, and Alice struggles to maintain relationships with her family as her children decide whether to get tested, and deal with their results.
We watch Alice battle her disease as she tests her shrinking vocabulary with hidden words on her kitchen chalkboard and sets reminders on her phone asking simple questions like the name of her daughter.
But, of course, Alice slowly and inevitably begins to lose her grip.
By almost all accounts (including the Academy’s) it’s a gripping performance, and Moore’s understated portrayal of an increasingly frayed Alice carries the movie.
Moore’s performance is an empathetic one, and that is at least in part thanks to working with Richard Glatzer, who was battling ALS—another devastating degenerative condition—while he directed and wrote the film (his partner Wash Westmoreland was the second half of the writing/directing team).
Moore’s performance took on an even greater significance March 10, when Glatzer died from complications relating to his illness.
Glatzer’s death is a tragic but powerful symbol of the reach, scope and devastation of degenerative diseases, and his final work is a testament to that.
The film will screen at the Chaba Theatre April 2 at 7 p.m.
