A very impressive performance by Julianne Moore who always plays the small stuff so perfectly. So much so that she makes it look easy and I began to think I could play the part just as well myself….that is no doubt on account of the fact that I beginning to wonder whether I have the early onset of Alzheimer’s – especially when in the film her neurologist tested her on a road name that I too had forgotten in five minutes…
This dreadful disease is highlighted movingly by Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) who is very happily married to Alec Baldwin with three grown children (including Kate Bosworth and Kristin Stewart). She plays a highly renowned Linguistics Professor at Columbia University who begins to slowly forget words, to get lost and put things in the wrong place. Such a tragedy when words are her life and I did slightly wonder whether this was a little too convenient – the illness she had was familial and rare and 100% going to occur if you carry the gene, although the more you use your brain, the quicker the deterioration so she was always going to have to play someone hugely intelligent to show the dramatic decline. We watch her struggle to at first keep it covered up and then to quell her fear. She finds clever ways to get around the problem of memory but her decline is sudden and the affect on her family traumatic.
I watched it with my daughter who enjoyed it too and we left both feeling marginally relieved that I hadn’t yet hit that level of “where did I leave my keys/wine/tea?” and she had a bit more time before having to become my carer.
