discussion Still Alice

In the film Still Alice by Lisa Genova, we see Alice plans for the future while she still possesses the ability to plan, but she doesnt plan well enough. She sees AD as a memory-robber that interferes with language abilities and memory (which is mostly true). She sets up memory tests on her phone to show when her illness has run its course and when it is time to take her own life. Early on, she plants pills in a safe place with the intent to overdose. However, she does not foresee being interrupted during her attempt to carry out her plan, as she attempts to open the bottle the pills spill out and roll onto the floor as her caregiver enters the home. She is still alive (and still Alice) before the film ends. Eerily, the words Alice and alive are easy to interchange when typing, because c is next to v on her phone, making me curious if this could actually happen making her change her mind.

(a) In saying all of that, do you think the plan Alice constructed was a viable one? Think about quality of life; both Alice and her family. Is this decision in character for Alice? Do you think her family would have understood or approved?

(b) Do you think the film rendered enough of how the family felt about the disease, about Alice, and their plans to take care of her?

2. The crisis is presented in the title.

(a) Is she still Alice?

(b) Despite all the agony, the fear and the indignity of Alzheimers, is there some unbreachable core of identity that will remain? Or is Alices sense of self utterly eroded, reduced to merely a set of symptoms?

3. Do you find irony in the fact that Alice, a professor and researcher at Columbia, suffers from a disease that causes her brain to atrophy?

(b) Why do you think the film maker chose this profession?

(c) How does her past academic success affect Alice’s ability, and her family’s, to cope with Alzheimer’s Disease?

4. When Alice’s three children, Anna, Tom and Lydia, find out they can be tested for the genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer’s, only Lydia decides she doesn’t want to know.

(a) Why does she decline?

(b) Would you want to know if you had the gene?

5. Alice asks John to take a sabbatical year together.

(a) Why does John decide to keep working?

(b) Is it fair for him to seek the job in a new state considering Alice probably won’t know her whereabouts by the time they move?

(c) Is he correct when he tells the children she would not want him to sacrifice his work?

6. The film is primarily told from Alice’s point of view. As Alice’s disease worsens, her perceptions indeed get less reliable.

(a) Why would the film maker choose to stay in Alice’s perspective?

(b) What do we gain, and what do we lose?