Alive Inside

ALIVE INSIDE is an absolutely amazing, moving and memorable documentary.  It features such key "players" as Bobby McFerrin, Bill Thomas and Oliver Sacks (as well as others). 

It is a joyous cinematic exploration of music’s capacity to reawaken our souls and uncover the deepest parts of our humanity. The camera reveals the uniquely human connection we find in music and how its healing power can triumph where prescription medication falls short.

This stirring documentary follows social worker Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music and Memory, as he fights against a broken healthcare system to demonstrate music’s ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it.

Alive Inside Website.

Still Alice (2015)

 

This is an amazing film; a real tour-de-force starring Julianne Moore as a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.  It is a sobering look at a devastating process.  It shows how the disease affects the patient, but the illness impacts on the entire fabric of the family. If you are interested in the topic, this is a "must see."

In the genre of films dealing with illness, Still Alice in on a par with Wit, starring Emma Thompson.

From A.O.. Scotts, NY Times Review, December 2014.
“Still Alice is a movie that addresses a nightmarish circumstance with calm, compassionate sensitivity. Based on Lisa Genova’s novel and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, it follows the deterioration of a Columbia linguistics professor who learns she has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), along with her husband and three children, must endure a cruel and absurd ordeal that has no real chance of growing easier. With what seems like shocking rapidity — the film’s chronology is appropriately fuzzy — Alice slides from a witty, intelligent, capable adult into a fragile and confused shadow of her former self."  2015 101 minutes.

Fred Won't Move Out (2012)

Starring Elliott Gould, the film was written and directed by Richard Ledes, and was shot in Ledes' childhood home in Westchester County, New York.  
The semi-autobiographical story follows two grown children who have to decide what to do when it appears that their parents are no longer better off staying in the family home in which they have lived for fifty years.
Opens is theaters September 21, 2012.

Official Website.

The Savages (2007)

Carrying the scars of an abusive childhood, Savage siblings Wendy (Laura Linney, in an Oscar-nominated role) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) -- a long-aspiring playwright and a drama professor, respectively -- now face the challenge of caring for their ailing father (Philip Bosco). Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, this insightful indie drama explores the depth of one family's emotional disconnect. 2007 113 minutes

NY Times Review.

This is a brilliant film. Sometimes, a tough film to watch; but definitely worth it.

Iris

Iris Murdoch was l'enfant terrible of the literary world in early 1950s Britain -- a live wire who thumbed her nose at the conformity of the era via a voracious sex life that included male and female partners. In this snippet of her life, Murdoch (Judi Dench) faces the onset of Alzheimer's disease alongside her adoring husband (Jim Broadbent). Kate Winslet portrays the young, free-spirited Iris in flashbacks.

2001 90 minutes

Availability:
Netflix
Milne Library Williamstown
Sawyer

Based on the book:
Elegy for Iris by John Bayley
Published by Macmillan, 2000 (275 pages)
ISBN 0312253826, 9780312253820
John Bayley, who was married to Iris Murdoch for over 40 years, has written one of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years. With great compassion he recreates their passionate love affair and poignantly describes the mask that ineluctably descended over Iris' being with the progression of her Alzheimer's disease. It was Bayley's accomplishment to find the glimmers of Iris' old self that broke through the barriers of her disease, and to share with us his message of hope and joy.

A Song for Martin

From Netflix: Barbara (Viveka Seldahl) is a violinist who's attracted to Martin (Sven Wollter), a famous composer. Despite being married to other people at the time, the two fall in love and get married, sure that they'll enjoy a blissful life together. But when Martin is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, his mind and their relationship begin to deteriorate, as Barbara tries to hold on to the man who was once so vibrant and gifted. 2001 113 minutes

In my opinion, this is a better film than "Away from Her" and it deals with essentially the same subject.

Availability:
Netflix

Away From Her

Netflix Blurb: Sarah Polley directs this drama about a long-married but still very much in love couple whose lives are torn asunder when one of them develops a dementia andmust enter a rest home. Julie Christie (in an Oscar-nominated role) plays the wife, and Gordon Pinsent plays the husband desperate to ensure her comfort in the new setting while burdened with guilt over past behavior. Olympia Dukakis co-stars in this film inspired by an Alice Munro story. 2006 110 minutes.

Trailer