Still Alice

This week we are reviewing Still Alice, the 2014 drama directed by Richard Glatzer and starring Julianne Moore as a brilliant linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at fifty. Alec Baldwin plays her husband, with Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth as her daughters. Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress. This is not a fun watch. It is, however, an important one.   Before the film, the Scotsman arrives wanting to talk about chocolate — specifically a Scottish chocolate bar he still cannot name after thirty-odd years of trying to remember it. The Aussie is briefly invested. Then the Scotsman pivots to a newspaper article about ejaculation frequency and prostate cancer risk. Twenty-one times a month, apparently. The Aussie immediately asks to talk about Alice instead. The Scotsman says it is a public health matter. It is not a smooth segue.   On the film. Both hosts agree it is uncomfortable, sad, and quietly frightening — particularly for two men in their early fifties watching a character their own age lose the thing she built her life on. The Aussie brought this one to the podcast after stumbling across it and being stopped cold by a single line: Alice, freshly diagnosed, tells her husband she would rather have cancer. Because at least cancer doesn't make you look stupid. That line. That is the whole film in one sentence.   The Scotsman prefers The Father — with Sir Anthony Hopkins, — and thinks Still Alice plays it a little safe and a little Hollywood. The Aussie thinks it is more powerful than that and gives it a higher score. They debate Alec Baldwin's character at length — is he a decent man stretched to breaking point, or just a selfish husband who takes a promotion while his wife is disappearing? The Aussie is unequivocal. Hard no. He would not leave. He is slightly emotional about it.   The butterfly scene stops both of them. Alice, in her clearest moments, records herself a message — five questions, and if she can't answer them, she is to take the pills she has hidden and not tell anyone. She forgets she made it. She stumbles across it later and tries to follow the instructions. The housekeeper comes home at exactly the right moment. Neither host quite knows what to do with that scene and both say so.   The Scotsman is reminded about his panic attack story from the GFC — driving down Toorak Road, vision closing to a pinhole, heart going at a million miles an hour. He had no idea what was happening. The Aussie counters with a blood pressure episode in the middle of the night where he lay there thinking he would not make it to morning and decided not to wake his wife because, genuinely, what was she going to do.   Rohan Reminisces goes into 2014 — and this week it is actually worth sticking around for, including a moment where the Scotsman looks directly at the answer and gets it wrong anyway.   Ratings: 3.8 from the Aussie, 3 from the Scotsman. Watch The Father afterwards and come back and tell us which one hit harder.   The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe or follow — it genuinely helps the show keep growing. Thanks for listening.