REVIEW: Still Alice

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Some actors and actresses always register as Oscar winners in my brain, whether the claim is accurate or not. They’re rare members of the Hollywood elite who go beyond the classification of “movie star” or “respected performer,” into the realm of the greats. Julianne Moore is easily one of those actresses. That’s why it always surprises me anew when I remember that she’s never won an Academy Award, despite four previous nominations.

It looks like the fifth time will be the charm. Unless something insane happens later this month, Moore will win Best Actress for her emotionally devastating performance in Still Alice. She delivers the kind of work Oscar voters love, but it never feels indulgent or over the top. In fact, she’s so good that she elevates the project out of TV movie territory. Without her performance, along with strong work from Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart, the drama wouldn’t look out of place on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel.

Moore plays Alice Howland, a renowned linguistics professor who is happily married to a brilliant doctor (Baldwin) with whom she has three grown children (Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish). They have the kind of perfect lives that only wealthy New Yorkers in movies can relate to. That’s why Alice gets so frustrated when she begins to experience strange phenomena, like forgetting words during a lecture or getting momentarily lost while jogging on her normal route.

She schedules a series of tests just to be safe, but the results land with a shattering blow: she has early onset Alzheimer’s. The disease is simply an annoyance at first, resulting in Alice missing appointments or forgetting she’s already met her son’s new girlfriend. She even employs gallows humor to cope. However, the effects ultimately grow more severe, forcing the woman who has always been known for her brain to prepare for a future when she won’t recognize her family or herself.

As you might imagine, Still Alice isn’t exactly a viewing experience filled with sunshine and rainbows. Honestly, it’s far more terrifying than any zombie movie or slasher flick could ever hope to be; the monster that attacks this family isn’t make-believe.

It’s simultaneously thrilling and heartbreaking to watch Moore deliver a master class in acting, eschewing melodramatic hysterics for something much more subtle and real. Just watch how Alice’s eyes gradually convey panic when she realizes she doesn’t recognize the college campus where she works every day. Or the quiet humiliation she expresses when she can’t remember where the bathroom is in her own house.

She has a great acting partner in Baldwin, whose role is challenging in a different way: he must play a husband who clearly loves his wife, but is also a career-minded professional scared to watch the woman he adores transform into a stranger. Because he’s afraid to confront these feelings – he often literally runs away from them – he frequently comes off as unlikeable, but it would be a lie to say that’s an unrealistic scenario.

On a less somber note, Baldwin and Moore were also love interests on 30 Rock a couple of years ago, and that chemistry remains evident in their performances here. It’s wonderful to see them joke around in the film’s lighter moments, infrequent as they are. (Strangely enough, Baldwin played Cate Blanchett’s husband in 2014’s Blue Jasmine. Guess who won Best Actress last year? Clearly, you’re guaranteed an Oscar if Alec Baldwin plays your husband.)

I’m also happy to say Stewart redeems herself for sleepwalking through her paycheck roles in the atrocious Twilight franchise and the god-awful Snow White and the Huntsman. Her character, Lydia, begins the film as a disappointment in Alice’s eyes – the daughter who moved across the country to be an actress instead of going to college and obtaining a lucrative career. But as Alice’s condition worsens, Lydia proves to be the person most concerned with her comfort and stability.

While her father works all the time and her sister is concerned with starting her own family, Lydia uses Skype to talk to her mother and make sure she’s not in a condition to hurt herself or wander off. And, in the film’s final moments, she makes a decision that immediately demonstrates the strength of her commitment to family.

Still Alice isn’t a great movie in terms of unique narrative or filmmaking prowess, but it is an affecting story with stellar performances. That automatically makes it a lot better than stuff you’ll typically find at the multiplex in February. It opens in a few Atlanta theaters this weekend before expanding later this month.

Still Alice is rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, and brief language including a sexual reference.

Grade: B