Few feature films have dealt with a main character struggling with incipient Alzheimer’s disease, which is probably why Still Alice feels fresh, resonant and timely.  It is a meaningful drama with a heartbreaking premise, anchored by a graceful, nuanced performance by Julianne Moore, who is the favorite to win an Oscar next weekend.

Moore portrays linguistics professor Alice Howland, a strong, self-sufficient woman who irritatedly notices that she cannot always recall words.  This leads to tests and a prognosis of early Alzheimer’s disease.  Within months Alice is out of a job and racing to put her life in order before she cannot remember any of her past.  Her husband (Alec Baldwin) and grown children (Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart, Hunter Parrish) try to help, but they are unprepared for the stranger that Alice is slowly becoming.

The film, co-directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Last Days of Robin Hood), works because of the detail employed in depicting Alice’s detachment from her former self.  Alice’s struggle is a universal one, frantically attempting to memorize one’s own experiences as time and the disease erode memories and the feelings associated with them.  Anyone who has ever cared for a relative or friend with Alzheimer’s will recognize the accuracy of Alice’s predicament.  Julianne Moore’s performance stages Alice’s gradual disappearance from a smart, passionate, loving foundation which makes her metamorphosis that much more cruel.

And yet I don’t believe Still Alice is a great movie.  It hedges its premise, presenting the Howlands as a well-to-do family who can cope, however reluctantly, with the demands of Alice’s disease.  As such it doesn’t represent the thousands, or tens of thousands, of families who would be devastated, emotionally and financially, by such a situation.  Movies like this try to be hopeful, reminding us that life goes on for everyone else, if not for Alice.  But what if Alice were an inner-city teacher living from paycheck to paycheck, with a husband working two jobs, trying to put three grown kids through college?  Would their situation be as hopeful?  No way.

Still Alice is a solid film that describes how a disease for which there is no known cure can ravage any person of their personality, past, and soul.  It is an important film anchored by a terrific performance.  Yet it is not the definitive feature film treatment of a terrible disease which we should be doing everything in our power to eradicate.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  16 February 2015.