Still Alice Analysis

William Gibson once said, “Time moves in one direction, memory in another”. This is especially true in the film, Still Alice, where the audience is shown the progression of early onset Alzheimer’s in Dr. Alice Howland, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, and mother of three. Throughout the film the audience sees the slow deterioration of Alice and it not only affects her mental state but also in her physical appearance as well. Alice is known worldwide for her intelligence and is recognized for her immense vocabulary and her speech. She takes a considerable amount of pride in her scholarly accomplishments. On top of being a world renowned scholar, Alice also raised three children and kept up with domestic work around the house
ultimately making herself a superwoman. One of Alice’s collages says, “Alice Howland is the Lillian Young Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University. She famously wrote her seminal textbook, From Neurons to Nouns, while raising three children. […]. And it {the textbook} is now considered one of the cornerstones of linguistics education all over the world”. Not only did her family recognize her ability and willingness to do everything but other scholars did as well. In the beginning of the film, the audience is shown how much Alice’s work and intelligence make up who she is. She is very proud of her accomplishments and as she begins to decline over time, little bits of her begin to chip away as well when Alice is diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s. Though it is extremely rare, her type is also familial so it can be passed on to her children and if they have the gene there is a 100% chance they will get it as well. Patrick K Panegyres describes it as, “… and (early on-set Alzheimer’s) is considered to have more aggressive course and shorter relative survival time” (Panegyres). With this knowledge in mind Alice strives to continue to live a normal life to the best of her abilities. Time passes and Alice’s mind slowly starts to deteriorate over the course of several months starting with very small details that may be unnoticed by most.
At the beginning it is things like names and words but Alice truly starts to notice the symptoms when she gets lost on her run around the Columbia University campus where she teaches which is of course a very familiar area for her. Alice finally decides to meet with a neurologist and discuss her symptoms. She says, “I started forgetting little things like words and names. Then I got lost. Completely lost”. To most people it might seem like nothing to forget a name or even get lost in a familiar place, but for Alice it is far from normal. As her disease progresses, Alice begins to forget meeting people, family recipes, places in her own home and where she left her phone and the amount of time the phone was gone. John F. Kihlstrom said, “Whether perception-based or meaning-based, self-knowledge is represented in the individual’s memory” (Kihlstrom). Alice’s self-knowledge is rapidly decreasing leading up to her accident. While Alice and her husband John were at their beach house, Alice and John decide to go on a run. Before they leave, Alice goes to the restroom. She then walks downstairs and gets lost in her own home and cannot find the restroom resulting in an accident. John hears Alice crying downstairs because of her panicked state and finds her standing there and Alice says, “I couldn’t find the bathroom. […]. I don’t
know where I am”. At this point Alice has begun to really lose control over her body in a new way. Not only is she losing memories and years of scholarly growth and education, but she is losing the control over her body that she worked so hard to maintain by exercising and eating healthy. A few weeks later Alice wakes up at two in the morning and cannot find her cellphone. She starts to search the house in a panic desperately trying to find her phone and in the process wakes up John. He is able to calm her back down and they go back to bed. Later, John finds Alice’s phone in the refrigerator. When Alice is presented the phone she thinks only a day has passed since the phone went missing and in reality a week has passed without her knowing. From this point on Alice becomes virtually unattached from the family and no longer is given the choice to make her own decisions and the family steps in to help her, mainly her younger daughter Lydia. Along with her memory, Alice has lost the ability to do the simplest of task that most people take for granted such as caring for her physical state.
In the beginning of the film the audience is shown a woman who is very concerned about her heath and how she appears. Alice goes on nightly runs and drinks water when she is at home. She also eats lots of fruits and vegetable and any time she goes out to eat with her family her meal is always heathy. Alice is also well dressed for every occasions. She wears simple, elegant clothes daily and presents herself as the sophisticated woman she is. She also takes time to do her hair every day and always wears makeup but this all begins to change as her disease progresses. Alice slowly begins to not wear makeup or fix her hair every day. She starts to wear her hair back in ponytails to work then it evolves to Alice not even brushing her own hair in the mornings. The lack of makeup along with close up shots from the camera, Alice appears to have aged five years in the span of only a few months. In addition to the lack of time spend on her hair and makeup, she begins to completely change how she dresses until she is no longer to pick out her own clothing and her husband and others caring for her must chose for her. In the scene where John picks out Alice’s clothes, she begins to protest by saying, “No, I—I want my green one”. Although Alice may not be mental well enough to dress herself, the audience is shown the last efforts of Alice
trying to take control of her life. For the duration of the film, the audience sees a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman become crippled by a disease that was completely out of her control. This not only affected her mental capacity but her physical state as well. The salon article written by Andrew O’Hehir says it best, “There is a certain grandiose dramatic irony at work, I suppose, in the fact that Alice is intelligent, beautiful, accomplished and rich, none of which could protect her from freakishly bad medical new” (O’Hehir). Despite this rare disease and fatal odds, Alice fights to remain herself for as long as possible and to help and educate other people in her position as well as their families.