MovieChat Forums > Still Alice (2015) Discussion > Questions about the movie...

Questions about the movie...

posted 9 years ago by omaraguirre11
6 replies | jump to latest

My first question is why they used the blurry effect. Why would they use it when she's sitting by herself and there's people speaking in the background? Is that a symptom of Alzheimers? My second question involves a scene with Alice, when she's in the bathroom, and smears the toothpaste on the mirror. What was the point of showing that? And my last question is about the last scene, where Lydia (I think that's her name) is telling Alice something. I sort of lost interest in the scene, so could you tell me what the story was about? It was something about World War II I think. Also, why did they randomly show flashbacks's of Alice's past?

[–] gmoxie 9 years ago

I don't know if the blurry aspect is a physical symptom of Alzheimers. However, I took the blurriness to mean that she was becoming confused about her environment - it was not looking familiar anymore. Like a person who wears glasses and has a strong prescription, then while not wearing the glasses someone comes up and it's kind of scary because you can't see/recognize the face. She was losing her ability to recognize building and landmarks.

Toothpaste - not sure.

Funny you mention the scene with Lydia because I quickly lost interest as well - the reason is that she did not speak clearly and her words kind of mumbled out - I could not understand her except for a word here and there (all the rest of the movie was perfectly fine - so it was the delivery of the actress in this scene). I almost stopped the DVD to add captions. Too bad because I think it was supposed to be a sensitive message. I thought it was part of a play about people dying but that it's not over after death. Maybe someone else could hear what she was saying...

[–] mmitchell355-2 9 years ago

Earlier in the movie, Alice reads Lydia's diary. The diary was about the play Angels in America. Alice and Lydia have a fight about invasion of the daughter's privacy. The daughter realizes her mother just wants to understand her child, who is so different from her. The mother wants to connect with her daughter, while she is still able. So Lydia gives her mother the diary.

Near the end of the movie Lydia watches her mother fade away. Now the daughter wants to make a last connection with her mother, while she still able. So she reads a scene from Angels in America, hoping her mother cans still remember. It was a very sweet moment.

[–] floyddabarber 9 years ago

Thank you. That really connects so many well-placed dots in this fine movie.

[–] kwa1063 9 years ago

Lydia was practicing or reading lines of a part. It didn't make a lot of sense and was hard to follow. Apparently not for Alice though!
The flashbacks were, I think, Alice remembering things from her past. People with Alzheimer's (I know this from being a nurse and from personal experience with my father, uncle, & aunt) retain memories from their youth the longest. They may not know their spouse or children's names but they'll talk about their mother, father, siblings, and things that happened years ago.

[–] larpine-225-371665 9 years ago

The blurry effect was because the director(s) were trying to show what it was like from Alice's perspective. To the Alzheimer's victim, reality comes in, it's focused, and then the world returns to a blur.

The smearing of toothpaste, because that is something Alzheimer's victim do. In cognitive impairment, the function of smearing toothpaste on your teeth with a toothbrush, or using your hand to remove the steam from a mirror after you shower, or a cloth to clean the mirror is misaligned.

The flashbacks were of her mother and sister, the final scene with Lydia was of Harper Pitts closing monologue from Angels in America,(a play about AIDS in the nineteen eighties).

Angels in America was one of the books of plays that Alice finds after her husband tells her to abandon Moby Dick and read something simpler, suggesting that he find one of Lydia's plays that were in her room.

The monologue wraps the play and here the story of Alice, for it's about the "painful progress" that's existed with man from his origins, (a reference to Alzheimer's, for like AIDS in the 1980's, it's a killer with no cure or treatment), but more so, it's about life to life ever lasting.

[–] Helenlaurence 8 years ago

It's not a symptom of Alzheimer's for things to go 'blurry' literally!
It was a symbol used in the film to show her distance from her surroundings. She couldn't focus. Everything felt unreal. She was lost.