Free Still Alice Movie Review Sample

Film Studies

Alice Howland is a 50-year-old happily married wife and mother of three grownup children. Being a linguistics professor, she gives lectures at the Columbia University. Her life seems to be perfect until Alice realizes that she has started forgetting words and can easily get lost in the place she knows pretty well. The diagnosis of onset Alzheimer’s disease takes her and her family aback.
Since then Alice cannot live as she lived in former times. She loses her job and requires help at home. Alice’s marriage has also been influenced by prompt deterioration of her memory. Her husband John receives a new job offer in Minnesota, but Alice asks him to put it off. Moreover, being genetic, there is high possibility that it is passed on to her children. The eldest daughter Anna receives positive results that prove her predisposition to disease. Her unborn twins and Alice’s son test negative. The youngest daughter Lydia refuses to be tested.
In order to keep her memories about herself and her family members, she sets questions on her phone that she should regularly answer. In case she fails to do this, Alice keeps sleeping pills and video instruction how to act for her future self. At her doctor’s offer, she delivers a speech at an Alzheimer’s conference highlighting words in order not to forget what she has already mentioned. As the disease deteriorates, she becomes lost in her house in search of bathroom and does not recognize her daughter after the theatre performance. She also feels difficulties in answering her morning questions. When Alice meets her daughter and newborn grandchildren, she fails to recognize them.
After video call with Lydia, she finds the video with suicide instructions. However, due to failure to memorize the message and interruption of her caregiver, she does not take pills. Lydia moves back home to care for her mother when John decides to move to Minnesota. When the girl reads a section of Angels in America play to her mother, she, already being barely able to speak, says a single word: love.