How to get help
If you or a loved one are exhibiting signs of Alzheimer’s disease, call the Alzheimer’s Association hotline at 800-272-3900 or visit the Miami Valley Chapter’s website at www.alz.org/dayton.
Every Academy Awards year seems to have a distinct personality, and this year it seems to be the “real- life Oscars.”
Rarely have I seen such a strong batch of movies that are the stuff of everyday existence.
Take the astonishing “Boyhood,” my hands-down favorite for best picture. It feels so much like life as we really live it, you feel, at times, you are watching somebody’s home movies.
Even the biopics — “Selma,” “The Imitation Game” and “The Theory of Everything” — portray historical figures at their most human and vulnerable.
The trend hit home last week when “Still Alice,” starring best actress front-runner Julianne Moore, finally made its Dayton debut at the Neon Movies.
Moore plays Alice Howland, a 50-year-old woman battling early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. She should earn an Oscar for her searing portrait of a high-powered, Type A professional losing control of the life she has so carefully crafted.
My husband, Jim, and I should have been prepared for the film’s emotional wallop, I suppose, having lost his mother, Pat Denker, in November after a long battle with dementia.
Yet somehow we weren’t ready for such a shock of recognition. The protagonist, Dr. Alice Howland, was a much younger woman, after all; Pat was diagnosed in her 70s. Alice’s decline was rapid, while Pat slipped away from us by the most gradual of degrees.
So why did “Still Alice” connect with us, despite the very different circumstances?
The answer goes deeper than the physical features Moore shared with my mother-in-law: red hair, fair skin and big blue eyes.
The film addresses a universal theme: To what extent are you “Still Alice” — still your essential self — when you are losing many of the trappings of your identity?
Alice is a distinguished linguist and Columbia University professor who sees it all falling away from her. A momentary, easily forgiven lapse at a guest lecture — an early hint — devolves into disorganization and incoherence in her own classroom.
Will people look at her and see Alice, she wonders. Or will they merely see someone who forgets names, who grasps for the right word as if groping for glasses in a darkened bedroom?
That hit home. So many times, while visiting Pat in the nursing home, we almost wanted to shout out, “Hey! This was a woman who traveled the world, who graduated from the famed La Varenne cooking school in Paris. She raised three successful children and was an invaluable partner in her husband’s business career.”
We would look around the nursing home, and realize that all the residents have their own stories to tell. It would be wrong to marginalize them, ever, for their diminished physical or mental capacity. Because Pat herself was “still Pat,” after all, still her loving, sociable self, blowing kisses and checking in on other residents.
The film’s believability stems in part from the directors having partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association, according to Carrie Mueller, spokeswoman for the Miami Valley chapter. “The things that went on in the movie are very real,” Mueller said. “Julianne Moore even went through all the testing so she could experience it herself.”
Moore consulted with a young woman who has early-onset Alzheimer’s, and “that provided details that made it all very accurate,” Mueller said. “When Alice uses a highlighter while giving her speech to the Alzheimer’s Association, that is something this young woman does.”
“Still Alice” rang true in many other ways, Mueller said: “The reality is that this isn’t something that affects the elderly; it impacts people at younger ages. How it was portrayed as far as the disease process also was accurate. There is no way to slow the progress of the disease, although there are medications that can help with the symptoms.”
That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t get diagnosed, Mueller cautioned; they should immediately seek medical help if they see warning signs, as Alice does in the movie. “There could be medications that could help with the symptoms, and the Alzheimer’s Association can help you with planning and with building support systems. We know that families who have a diagnosis can live better lives.”
The movie could be a valuable tool both for fundraising and for increasing public knowledge about this underfunded disease, which could reach record numbers as baby boomers age. “We are so grateful,” Mueller said. “Having Julianne Moore up for an Oscar could raise awareness for something nobody really talks about, and could make a life-changing difference.”
Many of the clients and board members for the Alzheimer’s Association Miami Valley Chapter couldn’t believe the accuracy of “Still Alice,” even in small details such as Alice’s avoidance of parties and social situations for fear of forgetting names and causing embarrassment. “They often retreat from social activity,” Mueller said.
In a pivotal scene, Alice delivers a speech to the Alzheimer’s Association describing what her life has been like since her diagnosis.
“I am not suffering with the disease,” she said, “I am struggling.”
And she holds on fiercely to the things that make her human: her passion for language and the written word, her love for her family.
And in that struggle is the stuff of life itself.
Contact this columnist at maryjomccarty@gmail.com.
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