MovieChat Forums > Still Alice (2015) Discussion > Huge Problem With This Movie

Huge Problem With This Movie

posted 9 years ago by IrisJ123
21 replies | jump to latest

Early on in this film, the older daughter, played by a "barely there" Kate Bosworth, finds out that she has inherited her mother's condition. This means that she has a 100% chance of also developing early-onset Alzheimer's. It is GOING to happen, period.

So as she is watching her mother's decline, she is also seeing her own future unfold right in front of her. Yet, aside from the ONE scene in which she reveals her test results over the phone, this horrific and extremely dramatic situation is never again acknowledged.

Bosworth's character instead just goes on to have her IVF twins and act like a clueless ice queen, instead of dealing in any way with the fact that she is going to go through EXACTLY what her mother is going through in the not too distant future. Her kids are going to have to watch their own mother decline, just as she is doing now. (So should she even be having kids, even though they were able to assure she would not pass the condition on to them through pre-natal testing?)

The implications are huge, and it would have been a really fascinating element to explore. Instead it is just improbably dropped. If they were going to do that, they just should have had all the kids' test results come in as negative. It's just way too heavy of an issue to dismiss in a film like this one. It ruins the movie, in my opinion.

All that said, I always love Julianne Moore, and I think she did her best here, although I would have liked to see more of the "before" so we could truly get an idea of the great intellect she had before her decline. The few scenes they show us don't really convey that at all, because the decline has already begun.

[–] noveltylibrary 9 years ago

>>> All that said, I always love Julianne Moore, and I think she did her best here, although I would have liked to see more of the "before" so we could truly get an idea of the great intellect she had before her decline.

Exactly how I felt.

[–] mmitchell355-2 9 years ago

The movie, unlike the book does a disservice to the eldest daughter, she wasn't so cold in the book. However the movie is told from Alice's point of view, it is her story, not her children. The movie makes it clear Alice had been in decline for some time. Could Alice have emotionally or mentally handled her oldest daughter's distress? Would a loving child put that kind of pressure on a parent? I think it would have been cruel to have the mother suffer even more guilt, for passing the gene to her child. Alice's decline was so rapid, she even forgot about her daughter having the gene. The disease is cruel it wipes out everything, so why add to a patient's suffering.

[–] IrisJ123 9 years ago

Sure, but there were a few scenes that did not involve Alice, that were just dialogue between Alec Baldwin and the kids. Some sort of mention of this could have been inserted in there. It just seems so strange and unrealistic -- everyone in the family should be facing the fact that, not only do they have to care for Alice, but they are going to have to deal with the exact same decline with the oldest daughter. Not one word about the devastation of such a situation. It wasn't a possibility -- it was a sure thing. As the doctor said, a 100% chance that she will have the same exact decline, and hers might start even earlier than Alice's (he noted that Alice's intellect actually kept symptoms at bay for longer than the average patient).

[–] myrtletorres 8 years ago

You don't understand how fast this happens

[–] lubin-freddy 9 years ago

I actually enjoyed the narrow scope of the film. Trying to do more, to tell everyone's story, to give more background and flashbacks, etc., would have damaged the dramatic flow, which was, for me, perfect. If it was a mini-series, than we'd be talking about something else.

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] badreligionfan 9 years ago

I agree it is a problem, I was expecting more of the daughter story. However, a bigger problem to me was that the movie didn't have "embarrassing" moments about forgetting stuff in conversations. When my father in law got Alzheimer's, I remember he used to tell a joke or ask a question and his wife would pretend to hear it for the first time in this conversation. And he would ask me things twice and that "tension" that the whole group felt and acting like nothing was wrong, was not in this movie.

[–] beja-4 9 years ago

Me too, she seemed to be too cold and distanced. But on the other hand, we only see very few scenes where the family/relatives are gathered. Except for Lydia, and especially when she moved back home because of Alice. The film is from Alice's perspective and clearly carried by Moore, in a brilliant way.

I agree that there were scenes missing, as those you mentioned, that would've benefited the film. But I think that's also why it only was nominated for one Oscar, which is unusual when the lead actress wins the award. And if you look at the "Won 1 Oscar. Another 26 wins & 31 nominations. See more awards» ", that list is looong and it's only Moore who's been nominated/won, no one else. When the directors chose Alice's perspective, the film also became Julianne Moore's solo show. For better or worse.

[–] bcjjjs 9 years ago

They did have two embarrassing moments. After she is introduced to her son's new girlfriend, 5 minutes later, when Alice sits down at the table, she reintroduces herself to the girlfriend as if they had never met. (None of the family reacted.) Then Alice asked her husband, "When is your conference? When is our daughter coming over?" while he is gardening. She goes inside to find a book to read, comes back out and asks him the same thing again. But I agree with you, it was only two moments; there should've been more written into the family conversations and there was no tension. Both my grandmother and my husband's grandmother had Alzheimer's and it does cause tension and panic when these moments happen.

[–] Lucky456 8 years ago

Wait, wasn't there the part where she wet herself because she couldn't find the bathroom? Or where her boss tells her about her students saying that her lectures were erratic and hard to follow and asking her if she had a substance abuse problem? The part where her own family thinks she can't hold a baby? And there are multiple scenes where she asks the same things over and over.
I think people who have lived this (which my family and I have as well) want more of the embarassing things to be shown because we went through it too. We also felt out of control and uncomfortable and suffered with those feelings. But I found this to be more of a story about the losing of yourself and how it feels to the person who is falling away. By the time this happens in real life, most patients can't describe what it is like bc of their decline. The embarassing stuff most of us can fill in...when the daughter asks her mom what it felt like, to her as the patient, that really got to me.

[–] fairy_depp 9 years ago

I didn't want to see her dwelling on it the whole film... The film condenses several months/a year at least so she had time to get to grips with that. And yes, why should she not become a mother? She's got another 20 odd years until she has to contend with this by which time medical advances may mean she's able to delay it even further

[–] Kimal9000 9 years ago

While I certainly can relate to your point of view, I think it is implicit in the phoneconversation that the daughter is going to not make this a problem for her mother!
In that context, the daughter never mentioning her own disease becomes a subplot in its own: WE know she to has Alzheimers, but her mother has of coarse forgotten! And the daughter is a big enough person to not add to her mothers burden by never mentioning it again!
Don't you think that makes more sense than the notion that the director 'forgot' to develop that subplot?

[–] esskayess 9 years ago

Her daughter had big plans for her life and chose to go ahead with them, disease be damned. I can certainly respect that.

My people skills are fine. It's my tolerance of morons that needs work.