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
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
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