Review of Still Alice, directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the magical powers of the Internet: welcome! My name is Ashley, and I worked as a film critic, am an author myself, and I just generally love reading, writing, and watching all forms of art.

I started this blog as a form of a digital diary to keep track of what I’m reading, as I was finding I was reading so much I was beginning to forget the basics of what I was consuming.

There was a time before I was funemployed (I’m writing this at the end of December 2024, when I found out an opportunity I was supposed to have and was told I was guaranteed was, indeed, not guaranteed.), and I was watching a ton of movies in order to pretend and avoid the reality of applying for jobs.

I watched Still Alice during this time. Full disclaimer, I had never heard of this movie before I sat down and opened my Netflix. It said it was leaving Netflix soon, I saw the little plot summary Netflix gives you, and I decided it was worth trying before I probably never saw the movie again out in the wild.

So I pressed play and watched the movie. I watched it in one go, as many movies should be done in, but I think this is a movie you could easily split up into two viewings if you wanted to and were on a time crunch.

Let’s get into the review. I don’t want to go too hard on the introduction, as you’re probably here for the movie review and summary!

An established linguistics professor gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after she slowly begins forgetting everyday objects and words.

The protagonist of this movie is Alice Howland, a professor over at Columbia University in New York City. She’s well-established in her field and just celebrated her birthday, as she turned 50. They celebrate the occasion with their three kids, but that’s the beginning of the end for Alice.

When she’s giving a lecture, she begins forgetting words, and the warning signs also appear again when she’s out for a run and can’t remember her way home. Alice’s behavior concerns them enough that she goes to the doctor, and she comes out with a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s.

They broke the news to the kids, who then take tests to see if this is genetic. Their son is negative, but their one daughter comes up positive—she’s got the gene for Alzheimer’s. Their other daughter, an actress, says no to the test and decides to live her life and see what happens later on.

The movie then becomes quite sad in the sense as it depicts Alice’s slow decline to Alzheimer’s. She cannot remember her way back home, and it’s beginning to impede on her career as a professor in a major way. Alice is also having visions of her mother and sister, who died when she was a teenager in a car crash.

Realizing what’s going to happen, Alice records a video where she instructs herself to find sleeping pills she hid when she can no longer remember any personal questions. Alice then loses her job because she is unable to properly teach, and when the family goes on vacation to their second home, she can’t even find the bathroom in there.

When the go to see their daughter in a play, Alice also doesn’t recognize her. Alice’s husband decides to take a job in Minnesota as he watches his wife decline, despite her not wanting him to leave. She’s invited to an Alzheimer’s conference and gives a speech, which has such a positive reception from the guests.

But when Alice loses the phone and can’t answer her personal questions she asks every morning, she starts freaking out. She calls with her daughter, then finds the video where she instructed herself to take the sleeping pills. However, her caregiver comes in, Alice drops the pills, and then can’t remember what she was doing.

Her husband moves to the Midwest, and her actress daughter moves back home. She reads her a portion of Angels in America, which is quite fitting, and she asks her mother what she thinks. Alice, seemingly now unable to speak, tells her only “love.”

Overall Thoughts

I think this was a powerful film, although it might not be entertaining per say by mainstream standards. Some films exist to teach us about the world and the way we live, and this is a move that draws attention to how even a relatively young, successful woman can succumb to a disease we say only impacts older folks.

It’s also powerful in the sense that it humanizes this. I know not everyone knows someone who had Alzheimer’s, but my grandfather did and I could see how his symptoms manifested in this movie. It was realistic in that sense, even though my grandfather was in his seventies when he got the disease.

I think everyone should watch these kinds of movies at least once. Maybe then the world would be a little more kinder.

So go watch this if you haven’t already and are interested—I think it’s worth picking up if you can find a DVD copy, rent it, or if it ultimately becomes available on streaming again.

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