What if you find yourself getting less and less aware of yourself, forgetting where you are, forgetting the time? "I Miss Myself" describes the heroine Alice suffering from Alzheimer's disease, losing her memory day by day, she can only embrace the present, how can she maintain the dignity of the disease? Tell the family that she is still Alice, just lost her memory...
■ Text / Zeng Weizhen
People are accustomed to owning and panic about "losing". From external money, identity, status, interpersonal relationships, to internal memory and ability to live, once impermanence strikes, they often feel that they are suffering, and few people can realize that this is the normal state of life...
"I Miss Myself" is based on the novel Still Alice of the same name by Lisa Genova, a Harvard neuroscientist. Fiction, but she interprets it from the perspective of Alzheimer's patients, rather than the perspective of caregivers, and presents the patient's real mental journey.
forget? early-onset Alzheimer's disease
The film begins with Alice (Julianne Moore), who teaches at Columbia University in New York, loses her sense of direction on the campus where she runs on a daily basis, and opens the prelude to her illness. Alice, who is only 50 years old, is a famous linguistics professor. She is smart and independent, and she also likes to cook. She has an intellectual and emotional professor, Mr. John (played by Alec Baldwin). She also has three grown-up children. Except for the youngest daughter, who is bent on acting, she does not need to worry about the other two children. It's just that her perfect life is about to collapse, and a neurologist finally diagnosed her with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which is an "inherited PSI gene mutation".
Julianne Moore, the heroine of this film, is the only actress in Hollywood to have actresses in three major international film festivals (Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival). Her acting enriches the story and makes the film more convincing and moving. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland continued the spirit of the original novel, focusing on the process of patients losing their memory of language, text, space and time.
The film also arranges another conflict branch, Alice and her youngest daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart played by Kristen Stewart), who wants to pursue a career in acting and give up her university studies. , but it is the younger daughter who accompanies and takes care of Alice; and is familiar with possible changes in the living environment, her husband is invited to start a career in another state; and the family is worried about the genetics of early-onset Alzheimer's disease, the eldest daughter works hard I want to conceive, but I am worried that the disease will be passed on to the third generation.
The film is less concerned with the psychological struggles of caregivers, and it does not deal with interpersonal conflicts in a more specific manner, so it cannot make the general public with Alzheimer's relatives and friends around them project more identification. With the elegant and sad atmosphere of the film, the focus is also on the heroine who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
love, the strength that supports everything
The focus of the film’s narrative is that Alice faces her onset of losing her memory and sense of world reality as a roller coaster ride with no turning back. Alice, who considers herself an intellectual, imagines the embarrassing situation of "disability" in the future. As a professor of linguistics at a university, what she depends on for a living is all the achievements she has worked hard all her life, and all the memories of why she is who she is today, such as childhood, schooling, marriage, and children.
When doctors diagnose and confirm that she suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's disease, and the type of hereditary disease is also inherited, her future generations will also bear the pain she will face. The collapsed Alice revealed her illness to her family. Facing the impending loss of her proud career and the ability to live independently, a climax scene in the film is that she is helpless and "pre-arranges the ending" for her future. Before she actually loses her memory, she pre-recorded instructions so that she could follow the steps in the future to find hidden drugs to end her life. She named the file "Butterfly". meeting.
She did not choose to end her life immediately because she wanted to see every child have a stable future arrangement. Once the condition worsens and is beyond her control, at least she can follow the chart and end the pain for herself and her family. However, later, due to dementia, disability, and almost aphasia, even pressing the map has become a difficult project. The tear-jerking engine started when she, who was completely incapacitated at the end, tried to pronounce the word "love", which was also when the film came to an abrupt end.
Because of loss, we can only live in the present
A plain and simple movie, but it contains the revelation of life.
The entire plot of this film is based on Alzheimer's disease. In the contemporary era of medical technology advancement, it is still an incurable disease, especially the course of the disease cannot be reversed, and it seems that we can only try our best to alleviate it. This disease is commonly known as Alzheimer's disease, but the medical community recommends against using this name because it does not occur in the elderly. Disease progression is associated with fibrillar amyloid plaque deposition and Tao protein in the brain. Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60 to 70 percent of dementia, a persistent neurological deficit that worsens over time.
The most common early symptom is difficulty remembering recent events, a common symptom of poor memory. As the disease progresses, symptoms may include delirium, irritability, aggression, inability to speak normally, getting lost easily, emotional instability, loss of motivation; followed by loss of long-term memory, difficulty with self-care, and abnormal behavior. When the patient's condition deteriorates, they are often separated from family and social relationships, and gradually lose physical function, eventually leading to death. For example, Alice forgot where she was while running; slowly, during the course of the lecture, she forgot the content of the lecture, so she had to retire early; she could not even find the bathroom and wet her pants; finally, she almost fell asleep... …
When impermanence brings disease to the front, how do ordinary people like me see it? It is worth noting that many Eastern and Western physicians have suggested that exercise, avoiding obesity, and engaging in high-level inward meditation can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Many people think that because of impermanence, they cherish the daily life and often think of "living in the moment" as the solution, but the operation of "living in the moment" must be based on correct knowledge. Because illness is not only a physical and psychological problem, but also involves the karma, karma, and retribution of many kalpas. Regarding the karma of the past kalpas, my generation may be difficult to understand, but the meditation practice of concentrating on the mind includes "high-level inward meditative activities", which has been proved to establish beneficial neural circuits in the brain and avoid the The deposition of fibrous amyloid plaques helps prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Lost art, discover the truth of life
Because the mind of ordinary people flows outward, and the spirit experiences all events outward, and turns them into emotions, emotions, cognition and memory, which has always been the basis for ordinary people to recognize their "existence". The "Deciphering the Deep Secret Sutra" says: "Atona's consciousness is very deep and subtle, and all the seeds are like a waterfall." All kinds of thoughts are intertwined and cause and effect. People don't know that the five aggregates in the world are all temporary aggregations of false existence, so the concept of "I" is stacked on top of the world's delusions.
In the movie, there is a touching speech. Alice, who has been ill, sees clearly the most cherished "possession" she has accumulated in her life. After her illness, everything goes away like a ripple. But she quotes the poem "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979): "The art of losing isn't hard to master the art of losing... hard to master....but it wasn't a disaster.)." This adds a bright and positive energy to the sad tone of the film.
The Buddhist scriptures say: "This birth causes that to be born, and this death causes that to be destroyed." Positive outlook on life. Only by embracing the present and working diligently can we make life without regrets.
This article is excerpted from: " Life Magazine 380 "
View more about Still Alice reviews
