Greenwood’s screening of Still Alice is a must see
As one critic who calls it “warm and passionate” noted, the filmmakers “tackle a subject where a restrained, understated approach is the best insurance against sloppy sentimentality. It pays off handsomely.”
Chances are you’ve read, or know about, the best-selling novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova. Now, it’s time to see the movie.
On Monday, May 25, at Hudson’s Village Theatre, the Greenwood Centre for Living History will launch the latest edition of its Movies and More series with afternoon and evening screenings of Still Alice, each to be followed by an informal discussion period.
Much like other recent Movies and More offerings, including The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and last-year’s sold-out Gimli Glider, Still Alice is one of those rare, beautifully crafted and impeccably presented movies that lingers long after the projector is turned off and the lights go on.
For Still Alice doesn’t just tell a story (although it does that with charm and grace); it introduces us to an absorbing, difficult life situation, and with such compassion that we cannot help but become fully engaged.
New doors open, familiar doors close, everything changes, and by the time the movie ends, we find ourselves someplace we’ve never been before. It works. Why? Because it allows us to care.
The movie-version of Still Alice closely follows the book, apart from small details — the setting has shifted to New York City and Columbia University, for example — and I suspect readers will be delighted with the respectful way director Richard Glatzer lets the narrative unfold.
The story revolves around Alice Howland, age 50, a sophisticated university professor who at the beginning of the film learns she has become afflicted with early onset familial Alzheimer’s, the rarest form of the disease. Early onset Alzheimer’s typically occurs before age 65, moves rapidly through its various stages, and can be passed from one generation to the next.
Of course, the horror of Alzheimer’s lies in the way it affects those parts of the brain that control thought, memory and language. It is irreversible. There is no known cure.
With little preliminary fanfare, the film traces the arc of Alice’s deterioration from the moment she first suspects something is wrong in her brain, to the point where mind and memory have essentially ceased functioning.
But this is not a bleak film. As one critic who calls it “warm and passionate” noted, the filmmakers “tackle a subject where a restrained, understated approach is the best insurance against sloppy sentimentality. It pays off handsomely.”
Still Alice features a cast drawn from Hollywood’s A-list — Alec Baldwin, Kirsten Stewart, Kate Bosworth and the brilliant Julianne Moore as Alice in an Oscarwinning tour-de-force.
“Were it not for Moore’s superbly controlled performance,” another reviewer wrote, “the film might have come off as maudlin and predictable. But credit the filmmakers for trusting Moore’s instincts to give Alice a graceful balance between moments of powerful despair.”
The crux of the narrative in both book and movie lies in the title. When is Alice no longer still Alice? Is there an obvious moment, a telling sign? Or does Alice simply fade away, unannounced, leaving behind nothing of her former self?
How the film responds to these questions, and what it leaves for the viewer to ponder are the very elements that set its tone and give it strength.
Undoubtedly, that tone was influenced by a real-life drama that played out in parallel on the Still Alice set when the film was in production. Director Glatzer was himself suffering through the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, reduced to communicating with just one finger using a text-to-speech app on his iPad. He died in March of this year, short days after Moore was handed her Academy Award.
Remember: May 25 at Hudson Village Theatre; screenings at 2 and 7:30 p.m. For ticket information, contact Greenwood at history@greenwood-centre.org Longtime Hudson resident Bill Young is a writer and former Greenwood director.