Still Alice is a movie masterpiece that is not a pleasant experience to watch.
Julianne Moore slowly disintegrates from Alzheimer's before our eyes, and her performance is so compelling that I, at least, kept telling myself, "This is only a movie, I can escape it soon."
But you really can't. We all know that people are going through this dreadful process every day, and none of us can feel safe from it ourselves.
It could have been made even worse-- little is done with the fact that this (fortunately rare) form of Alzheimer's is hereditary through women, and Moore's daughter Kate Bosworth is carrying the bad genes and will be going through the same sufferings as Moore is now. Husband Alec Baldwin and daughter Kristen Stewart sacrifice their personal interests in effort to help Moore, but there is mercifully little about that.
Writer-director Richard Glatzer, who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease in 2011, keeps our attention relentlessly on Moore, who is almost unfortunately great in the role. And Moore's character is all fight. The most important part of the movie is her determined battle by means of various devices, from post-it notes, to portable laptop computer, to simple yellow marker to keep crossing out lines of her speech so she won't keep repeating herself, to keep herself under what control she can maintain until the next development of the disease wipes out whatever progress she can make.
Still Alice is almost more a duty than a pleasure, but it's great.
