PREGAME THOUGHTS

Hey, I like Julianne Moore! Hey, I like movies about mental health! Hey, Alec Baldwin? Eh. Hey, Kristen Stewart? Eh. Hey, Silas from Weeds? LOL!

Anyway, good enough for me. Let’s get the ball rolling.

THE 500(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Alice is Alice! Through thick and thin, she is still Alice, and isn’t that what matters most? Julianne Moore is the titular Alice, an incredibly intelligent and accomplished 50-year-old professor of linguistics at fancy-ass Columbia University.

Hints of memory degradation occur early on the movie: Alice forgets words during lectures, she gets slightly confused about her whereabouts during running. Sounds like early onset Alzheimer’s! It’s early onset Alzheimer’s! The movie goes through most of the stages of grief while as Alice struggles to cope with the news and her family attempts and struggles to support her. Alec Baldwin is her husband John, Kristen Stewart is her daughter Lydia, Kate Bosworth is her other daughter Anna, and Hunter Parrish is her son Tom.

Alice learns that this condition is genetic, and each child who has the gene has a 100% chance of developing the disease. Anna tests positive. Tom tests negative. Lydia opts out.

The one struggling the most with this is Lydia, who is already under a lot of pressure from Alice to be something more than she currently is: an aspiring actress. Their dynamic is just as you would expect. Lydia is often pressed between trying to be empathetic and getting frustrated with how Alice is treating her regardless.

After the diagnosis, Alice spends her days doing what she can to slow down the deterioration. She makes notes and memorizes words to test herself on later. She even casually sets up a suicide plan for herself when she can no longer answer basic questions about herself or her family, recording a video message for herself to watch later and hiding a bottle of Rohypnol in her dresser.

Daily life becomes harder as time goes on. Alice becomes unable to remember her lectures and has to admit to her boss her condition. She gets lost looking for the bathroom. She introduces herself to Tom’s girlfriend twice in 20 minutes. She doesn’t recognize Lydia when she talks to her after a performance in a play.

Alice is presented with an opportunity to give a speech at an Alzheimer’s conference, which she personally writes and then delivers while using a highlighter for keeping track of her train of thought. This is pretty much the last thing she ever does as an academic before completely falling apart.

There’s a point where Alice stumbles upon the recording she made for herself and starts trying to carry out the instructions with difficulty, culminating in a botched accidental suicide. It was almost funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.

Once it gets really bad, Alec Baldwin pusses out completely and decides to move to Minnesota for a career opportunity. It’s arranged for Lydia to (voluntarily) put her own aspirations on hold in order to move back home and take care of Alice.

Alice can barely speak by this time, but when Lydia reads a poem to her and asks what it’s about, she answers correctly: “love”.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Alzheimer’s

Of course I’m going to talk about Alzheimer’s. Why wouldn’t I talk about Alzheimer’s?? This movie was about Alzheimer’s!

Alzheimer’s runs in my family. Not much else does. Cancer doesn’t, diabetes doesn’t, heart disease doesn’t, but Alzheimer’s does. Here’s how I feel about that: MIXED! I can see some pros and cons to the whole ordeal, the major one being no longer cognizant of your own mortality anymore. I’d give a lot for that one alone, it makes for the not being able to draw a clock anymore part of it!

My great-grandmother had dementia, and although people say that having it must be terrifying for the individual, she always seemed pretty chill with it. She’d watch a ton of Matlock and talk a lot about her pretty friends from school. How’s that for the sweet life?

TOPIC 2 — The Suicide Plan

Not that they made it a lighthearted throwaway gag about it or anything, but Alice planning her suicide was a little bit on the fucked up side. I wanna break this one down for a minute.

Alice doesn’t get too bent about it on-screen, but since her whole life has been about her academic career in the field of linguistics — the very field related to the part of the brain she’s losing — it’s understandable why she would gravitate toward that line of thinking eventually. Imagine being an Olympic runner your whole life, and then getting your legs chopped off and then thrown into the garbage right in front of you! It’s EXACTLY like that. You think suicide wouldn’t cross your mind.

The plan itself was well-enough thought out, too. I don’t know how suicide plans work, but isn’t it usually 1) I’m gonna buy a gun, and 2) I’m gonna eventually use this gun? Alice’s plan had a whole system of paths and tasks, it was quite impressive actually. It almost worked too, but then that pesky caregiver startled her and she forgot what she was doing.

Then there was the method. Swallow a whole bottle of pills? Did she have no respect for her future Alzheimer’s pickle-brained self? That sounds like it would give off warning sirens to anyone, but what do I know? I’m not demented yet. But, just for grins, let’s try another plan. Alice sets up a breadcrumb trail that leads to a pile of guns. And then the pile of guns explodes, blowing up the whole house and also the neighbor’s house. Now that’s cunning.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Co-director Richard Glatzer could not speak due to ALS. He directed the film using a text to speech app on an iPad. Julianne Moore and Kristen Stewart dedicated their “Ice Bucket Challenge” to Glatzer.
I was originally going to say something snarky like “can you think of a bigger act of slacktivism than these two prominent actors doing the Ice Bucket Challenge two years after people were done doing it?” but then I saw that 2014 WAS the Ice Bucket Challenge year. So I’ll shut my fool mouth!

Alice is shown as a compulsive “Words With Friends” player. Alec Baldwin, who portrays her husband, was booted off a plane before takeoff in 2011 because he refused to stop playing the game and power down his phone.
Alec Baldwin was so fucking furious about this that he shot a woman in the face seven years later.

This marks the second time Alec Baldwin has appeared in a movie with Alice in the title. The previous film was Alice (1990).
I don’t know, this struck me as very funny. What’s his next one going to be called? Yes, It’s Still Alice?

During one of Alice’s doctor visits she asks her primary care physician to fill a script for the sedative Rohypnol (flunitrazepam). The doctor obliges and Alice fills the prescription. In actuality, though, Rohypnol has been banned in many countries and has been illegal in the United States since 1996. It is not approved for medical use in North America.
Banned in the United States? Then how come I have so much of it in my Coke glass right now? zzzzzzz

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

It has occasional TV movie vibes, but I’m glad I watched it. The performances were very good, with Moore giving what may have been the best performance of her career. The emotional impact of watching someone who had everything waste away before your eyes was, at times, heart-wrenching, but they didn’t turn it at all into a sap-fest.

Watch it on Netflix on a Tuesday evening if you have nothing else to really do before bed.