![]() Eventually, the sufferer fails to recognise even loved ones.ĭementia raises deeply troubling issues about our obligations to care for people whose identity might have changed in the most disturbing ways. As the disease progresses, only fleeting glimpses of the once capable person can be seen for the rest of the time, everyone is stuck with an uninvited guest. They become easily distressed as a thickening fog descends upon them, causing them to lose track of everything. They can no longer read obvious social cues. Memory becomes like a flickering signal from a faraway shortwave radio station: people can do and say things, then promptly forget them, and then do and say them again. And where is the real Alice Howland to be found?ĭementia is caused by a range of medical conditions (the best-known being Alzheimer’s) that eat holes in the short-term memory of sufferers and degrade their capacity to process new information. Moore’s Oscar-winning portrayal of her struggle against the disintegration of her self is the latest in a string of outstanding female performances – Judi Dench as Iris Murdoch in Iris (2001), Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011) – to explore the most troubling aspect of dementia: what happens to a person’s identity? Howland remains the same person and yet is clearly no longer the person she once was. A professor of linguistics in her mid-50s, Howland is trying to explain to her youngest daughter what it feels like to have Alzheimer’s disease. ![]() So says Alice Howland, as played by Julianne Moore, in the film Still Alice (2014). On my bad days, I feel like I cannot find myself… I don’t know who I am and what I am going to lose next.’ ‘On my good days, I can almost pass for a normal person. ![]()
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