Still Alice eats Cake

Cake and Still Alice are a most uncomfortable and yet, appropriate set of movies to pair together. Both deal with tragedy. Both deal with women who have gone through and are going through tremendous pain and loss. Both edge suicide very closely. And both come out the other side, though in very different ways. I don’t deem any of these as spoilers because neither of these films, in terms of their content, is shockingly new. That’s not a criticism either – a film’s success does not hinge on its freshness, in my opinion, but rather upon its execution of the known through a new lens. Still Alice is, by far, the more successful of these two films in that regard.

As I’ve written before, it’s very important in every review or discussion of a film for the reviewer to acknowledge his own biases so the comments are understood through that particular lens. Still Alice punched me in the gut from the get go because of my relationship with my parents, both of whom have diseases that, while they don’t define them, certainly affect their daily lives. Watching them go through their lives since the understanding of what is going on inside their bodies, suffering indignities and loss of self, has been painful. Cake had the effect of alienating me with its subject matter because the script (Patrick Tobin) and Director (Daniel Barnz) choose not to tell the audience what’s going on. Even when the subject matter becomes obvious, the filmmakers drag the story along rather than allowing us to embrace Claire’s acceptance. That isn’t right or wrong – just a personal opinion of how much misery I’m willing to put up with versus the human spirit from the heroine’s choice to get going with the reality of what she’s dealing with.

When we meet Alice (Julianne Moore), we see her as a woman with everything: a loving husband, beautiful family and stellar career as a brilliant professor of linguistics at Columbia University. She is managing what appear to be some small  new changes in her body, but nothing anyone who pays attention to their health after 30 hasn’t experienced. The terror of that line –when something is “just age” and when something is much more sinister – is something all of us live with.

The setup of Claire (Jennifer Aniston) is quite different. Her tragedy is hidden, and therefore her character’s acidity is what’s on display. It’s not easy to embrace, but the curiosity of “what happens” draws us forward. Her journey toward understanding and acceptance is the one we’re on – note the lack of forgiveness. Whether or not she should get there is understandably debatable, but in terms of the structure, execution and emotional connection to the journey, I was left wanting.

Both women will be highly regarded for their performances. They’ve each earned that. But it’s interesting to note that the package the performance is wrapped in matters; The takeaway matters. To that end, I’m leaning strongly toward Moore’s nomination over Aniston, not because of the performance alone – which are entirely subjective things to assess, but a discussion I’m happy to continue with any of you below – but because of the world Moore lives in with Alice. While Claire has her spectacular housekeeper Silvana (Brava, Adriana Barraza), Alice has a complex support system in her family – all with different angles on what Alice is going through and, therefore, making her world that much more complex and interesting. It’s no longer just about Alice, but the impact of what she’s going through upon others. And in the final moments of her journey on screen, she comes to a wonderfully logical, simple and still spectacular human conclusion about what she’s going through and why we went on the journey with her. Claire’s victory comes through a series of gifts, one of the strangest from a drifter which appears to earn the film’s title. Her final moment, meant to have the same impact as Alice’s, makes sense, but doesn’t carry the same emotional weight because of the way we got there.

Subject matter is not king, nor is performance – it is the combination of those elements with the execution, incredibly difficult to parse in the process, but far easier to diagnose post mortem (or post-post production), that determine the takeaway. Cake is good. Still Alice is excellent.

Resonance Ratings:
Cake: 2.5 out of 5
Still Alice: 3.5 out of 5