Still Alice

Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), a professor of linguistics at Columbia University, mother of three children and wife to John Howland (Alec Baldwin), learns that she is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease. After discovering it was genetically inherited from her father, her children test themselves to see if the disease has been passed to them. The eldest daughter, Anna (Kate Bosworth), tests positive. Anna is having twins, but they prove not to have the mutated gene. Her only son, Tom, a junior Doctor proves to be negative and her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), decides not to be tested. Alice, concerned and afraid for her future and how that will affect those around her, begins to try memorizing random words that she writes and then hides on a blackboard, as well as setting up important personal questions on her phone that she tasks herself with answering every morning. Tagged at the end is a message telling her to go to a video she recorded which instructs her future self to commit suicide via sleeping-pill overdose should she be unable to answer the questions. Alice's disease progresses, while relations with her family are strained from many separate directions, including the loss of her academic position, her husband's work demands, her continually increasing needs, and Lydia's elusive acting career. Alice is able to attend an Alzheimer's conference and deliver a moving speech to a standing ovation regarding the difficulties she is forced to endure. Over the course of several months, her disease begins to take its toll, and Alice begins to have difficulty answering her questions or spelling them correctly. It gets to the point where, following one of Lydia's plays, she initially fails to recognize her daughter. Further stress is added when John announces that they must move to Minnesota to better their financial situation, as well as her losing her phone for a month. After having a video chat with Lydia, she tries to open a file her daughter sent her, but inadvertently opens the video file addressed to herself. Having regressed even further at this point, she willingly complies with its dire instructions and, with some difficulty, is able to get the pills and go to the bathroom. She pours them into her palm and is about to take them, when the front door is suddenly opened by her caretaker. Flinching, she spills the pills onto the floor and then forgets what she was doing, ending the possibility of her committing suicide. John resolves to move to Minnesota while Lydia moves from her home in California to care for her worsening mother. Lydia reads Alice a section of the play, Angels in America, and, upon being questioned about its meaning, Alice, now barely able to form words, manages to speak one: love.