Still Alice (2014)

Moving drama starring Julianne Moore as a brilliant professor of linguistics who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at the age of 50. 

The film focuses on her struggle with the disease, and also on the relationships with her insensitive, career-focused husband (Alec Baldwin) and three grown-up children. There’s particular emphasis on her daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart), who initially seems the most estranged but who then gives up the most to care for her mother. 

Moore is fantastic, as always. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing this role with more empathy. I could believe her totally. Stewart is also nuanced and sensitive, and the scenes with the pair together are by far the most affecting.

If there’s a failing it’s that the family’s life of privilege is never really in question. The crisis of the disease would be an altogether different outcome for someone who wasn’t successful, wealthy or beautiful, but – this being a film – those options are not even considered.

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