Month: April 2015

A Song and Dance with Messrs Bach, Händel and Lully

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I don’t want to make a song and dance about these giants of the baroque era, ergo this post has no airs and graces, just a selection of Airs and Gavottes!

Bach - G & R

In lieu of modern inventions such as TV and radio, the people of the baroque era had to find other ways to amuse themselves. Basically, this meant a lot of singing and dancing and live music performance, and an expectation from the composers of the day to provide the basis of said entertainment.

The Song

The ‘Air’, derived from ‘Aria’ or any lyrical work, is a song in instrumental and vocal music.

From Wikipedia:

Lute ayres emerged in the court of Elizabeth I of England toward the end of the 16th century and enjoyed considerable popularity until the 1620s. Probably based on Italian monody and French air de cour, they were solo songs, occasionally with more (usually three) parts, accompanied on a lute. Their popularity began with the publication of John Dowland’s (1563–1626) First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597). His most famous ayres include Come again, Flow my tears, I saw my Lady weepe, and In darkness let me dwell. The genre was further developed by Thomas Campion (1567–1620) whose Books of Airs (1601) (co-written with Philip Rosseter) contains over 100 lute songs and was reprinted four times in the 1610s. Although this printing boom died out in the 1620’s, ayres continued to be written and performed and were often incorporated into court masques.

The most famous ‘Aria’ of all is probably from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Here is the incomparable Glenn Gould to carry you off to heaven:

Händel – Air in D minor from Suite No. 3 HWV 428 on piano by Murray Perahia:

I love this unusual transcription of Lully’s Air Tendre et Courante for the alto saxophone and piano:

I can imagine this being performed at Versailles! Lully – Airs pour Madame La Dauphine: Pavane des Saisons, for Triple Baroque Harp by Andrew Lawrence-King:

Lully – Air des Espagnols from ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ (Sarabande), in a vibrant interpretation from 21st Century Baroque:

I also love this recital by Jordi Savall and Le Concert Des Nations:

Air on the G String

There are so many lovely versions of Bach’s immortal ‘Aria’ from his Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068, which was transcribed for violin and piano in the 19th Century by German violinist August Wilhelmj and titled ‘Air on the G string’.

By transposing the original key of D Major into C Major and lowering the notes by an octave he was able to play the entire piece on one string, the eponymous G string. It was one of Bach’s first works to be recorded in the early 20th century.

If there was ever a musical piece that could be classed as a form of meditation; this is it.

Yehudi Menuhin in vintage form. His bow control is awesome. I always think it’s harder to play at slower tempos, especially in a more legato style. He doesn’t get an attack of the “pearlies” (problems keeping the bow in constant contact with the strings) here!

Voices of Music on period instruments:

Fascinating chat beforehand with Anne Akiko Meyers about her Guarneri del Gesu violin (once owned and played by Henri Vieuxtemps) The music starts at 3.32:

A wonderful mellow transcription for trumpet, with Russian ace Sergei Nakariakov:

Daniil Shafran with a string orchestra playing the most divine cello transcription of Bach’s Aria:

It’s also perfect jazzed up by Jacques Loussier and his superb trio!

I can’t resist this gorgeous, ethereal vocal version by Libera:

The Dance

The Gavotte is a dance, and a stately one at that. With its origins in France, this traditional folklore dance can be lively or slower in tempo. The Gavotte is said to have taken its name from the ‘Gavot’ people of the Gap de Pays region in south-east France.

From Bach.org:

The gavotte traces its history back to the late 16th century, and continued as a popular courtly dance form to the end of the 18th century. Bach wrote 26 pieces he titled “gavotte”, including movements in three of the four orchestral suites. A gavotte is a stylized French dance, moderate in tempo, always in duple meter, with each phrase beginning half-way through a measure. The phrases are almost always groups of four measures each, and are often paired in an antecedent-consequent manner. Like the air, it is a binary form, with two repeated sections. It is graceful, sometimes joyful, but not as romping and raucous as a gigue.

Among other types of dance, the Gavotte was popular at the court of Louis XIV. I can imagine groups of ladies and gentlemen dressed in their finery, feet poised, knees bent as they bow and step in unison. An example of a Baroque Gavotte dance:

Hilary Hahn in a beautiful recital of Bach’s Gavotte en Rondeau from the Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006:

Lully – Gavotte for Cello & Piano with Mischa Maisky and pavel Gililov:

Lully – Gavotte en Rondeau for Piano, played so beautifully by Cziffra György:

Bach – Gavotte from Cello Suite No. 6 with Mischa Maisky

The Gavotte from Bach’s English Suite No. 3 in G minor, BWV 808 with Trevor Pinnock at the Harpsichord:

A spritely Gavotte from Bach’s French Suite No. 6 in E Major, BWV 817 by Glenn Gould:

As I had a few versions of Bach’s Aria from his Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068, here are the Gavottes I and II from the same suite in its original form by Capella Istropolitana:

Händel’s Gavotte in G Major, HWV 491 transcribed for classical guitar and performed by Andres Segovia:

So, with a skip and a hop and a hum, I will leave you to enjoy the music! I’m off to practice the Gavotte en Rondeau on my violin…

A Celebration of the Radical Art of the Pre-Raphaelites

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“Sometimes thou seem’st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are.” ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

One of the most iconic paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite era is John Everett Millais’ Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, ‘Ophelia’ (c. 1851-52), chosen as my header image. When I saw his beautiful but mournful likeness of Shakespeare’s ill-fated heroine from Hamlet up close and in the flesh, during the Tate’s 2012 exhibition – Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde – it was a special moment.

A taster of the exhibition from art historian Lucinda Hawksley:

Ophelia took many months to complete, in exacting conditions in a watery corner of leafy Surrey, and tested the painter and his muse, model and later artist herself, (Elizabeth Siddal) to the limit. Poor Lizzie’s health suffered as a result of lying in cold baths for hours on end as John became engrossed in his art. The story behind Ophelia.

“Thus Millais denied technical convention, drew from nature, reconstructed the past and embraced technological progress in materials.” ~ John Ruskin in a letter to The Times.

The trailblazers of Victorian art were undoubtedly the three founding members of a group of artists, known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB): Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 82), Sir John Everett Millais (1829 – 96) and William Holman Hunt (1827 – 1910). The later four members of the PRB were James Collinson, a little known genre painter, Thomas Woolner, sculptor and artist, plus William Micahel Rossetti (younger brother of Dante), and Frederic George Stephens.

The Early Years

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in September 1848. It helps to understand the historical and political context from which their art developed: the age of the Industrial Revolution and the Gothic revival, marking the end of a turbulent decade in British History. Perhaps with a degree of sympathy for Chartism and the People’s Charter of 1838, the early works of the Pre-Raphaelites shared the rebellious, anti-establishment energy of these years, and earned notoriety for its creators in Victorian society.

William_Holman_Hunt_The Hireling Shepherd

The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt (1851)

Woolner’s emigration to Australia marked the break-up of the PRB in 1853, after which the members of the brotherhood followed independent careers. Hunt travelled to the Holy Land to pursue his authentic brand of religious history painting, while Rossetti explored and developed an iconic style of female beauty in art, a forerunner to the aesthetic movement. Millais remained at the forefront of European artistic culture, and Morris and Burne-Jones became known for their romantic depictions of medieval poetry and literature.

Edward Burne-Jones_Love_Among_the_Ruins

Love Among the Ruins ~ Watercolour by Edward Burne-Jones (c. 1870-73) titled after the poem by Robert Browning.

I adore their art, (hence the image of Veronica Veronese on my About page), and also that of other artists associated with the wider Pre-Raphaelite circle, such as Edward Burne-Jones, Arthur Hughes, William Morris, Frederick Sandys, Ford Madox Brown, Frank Cadogan Cowper, John William Waterhouse, John  Roddam Spencer Stanhope, John Brett, Henry Wallis, Walter Howell Deverell, Poet Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, an artist in her own right, (lover and wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti).

dante_gabriel_rossetti_14_veronica_veronese

Veronica Veronese by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1872)

There’s nothing outrageous about Pre-Raphaelite art to the modern eye, but in the early to mid 19th Century it caused an outrage! Ten years before Impressionism became popular this group of innovative painters and sculptors wanted to portray their imagery and subjects with a more realistic feel, departing from the existing and popular Renaissance style of Raphael.

John_Everett_Millais - Mariana

Mariana by John Everett Millais (1851)

The PRB eschewed the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, (founder of the Royal Academy of Arts), and derided him with the sobriquet ‘Sir Sloshua’ because of his broad style of academic mannerism. Quite simply, their ground-breaking art took the Victorian art world by storm.

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse (1894)

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse (1894)

They had a champion for their new type of vivid and colourful portrayals; depicting religious, landscape, literary, mythological and historical scenes, under the patronage of the prominent Victorian art critic, John Ruskin.

BBC Documentary – Victorian Revolutionaries:

I think this rather prophetical excerpt from The Guardian in 1851 perfectly sums up their aim and legacy:

The true distinction of these men is, that they are poets on canvass, and paint mind, character, and feeling, while the most of our figure painters – at least those who attempt anything beyond the delineation of humorous scenes – do little else than give a prosaic and literal representation of the action or person they profess to depict. In how many cases is the title of a picture a mere after-thought? How often is an historical piece nothing more than a collection of costumes? The rich colours, the minute and careful finish which mark the works of Millais and Hunt, give one the impression of being the natural result and accompaniment of the intense vividness of their conceptions, and not mere efforts of executive art; and these qualities are here but subordinate to the higher interest of expression which pervades the whole. In a word, these painters have touched a deeper chord than English art has hitherto known; and in no short space of time their merits will be clearly recognised as are now those of a Keats or a Beethoven, whose works, when first promulgated to the world, were pronounced strange, unintelligible, and contrary to all rule.

Their private lives were as colourful as their art, hence author Franny Moyle wrote a book that explored their relationships with each other and their muses. The book was later adapted by the BBC as a drama series by the same name: Desperate Romantics, with Aiden Turner (of recent Poldark fame), Rafe Spall, Samuel Barnett and and Tom Hollander in the main roles. It was the first fictionalised programme that drew me in to their world and made me a fan!

Desperate Romantics Featurette:

I love Rossetti’s poem, Sudden Light, which also featured in a scene of Desperate Romantics between Gabriel and Lizzie:

From Faust ~ Goethe

She excels

All women in the magic of her locks;

And when she winds them round a young man’s neck

She will not ever set him free again.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Lady-Lilith

Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (c. 1866-68)

Prose that inspired Rossetti’s lustrous painting of Lady Lilith, modelled by Alexa Wilding, (c. 1866-8 altered 1872-3), as the archetypal ‘femme fatale’, a figure of both danger and allure. To me it’s erotic and aesthetic appeal is arresting. Swinburne commented, “For this serene and sublime sorceress there is no life but of the body.”

‘Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil’ ~ John Keats (1st verse) based on a story from Boccaccio

Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!

Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!

They could not in the self-same mansion dwell

Without some stir of heart, some malady;

They could not sit at meals but feel how well                 5

It soothed each to be the other by;

They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep

But to each other dream, and nightly weep.

Isabella was Millais’s first completed painting after the formation of the PRB, and exhibited at the RA in 1849.  Curator Jason Rosenfeld reveals the story behind John Everett Millais’s painting Isabella:

Some Pre-Raphaelite trivia/tidbits:

  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting Beata Beatrix (c. 1864-70) was a hommage to Dante Aligheri and also to his muse and deceased wife Elizabeth Siddal, who died at the tender age of 32 from a laudanum overdose.
  • William Morris, known principally as a poet and collector of rare books and manuscripts, and later for his textile designs painted only one known easel painting – a portrait of his future wife (Jane Burden) posing as La Belle Iseult (c. 1857-8).
  • Edward Burne-Jones painted his lover Maria Zambaco (c. 1870), as a commission from her mother and his patron, Euphrosyne Cassavetti, and is confessional in content.
  • Dante-Gabriel-Rossetti - Astarte-SyriacaThe largest sum of money Dante Gabriel Rossetti received for a work of art was £2,000 from the photographer Clarence Fry, for his 6ft high sensual oil on canvas of the ancient Syrian Goddess of love, Astarte Syriaca (c. 1877), modelled by Jane Morris (who he became obsessed with).
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti had Lizze Siddal’s remains exhumed so that he could retrieve his poems which had been buried with her.
  • John Everett Millais fell in love with his patron and mentor’s unhappy wife Effie Ruskin. She eventually left Ruskin (and had their unconsummated marriage annuled), married Millais and had 13 children with him.

A Passion for the Pre-Raphaelites by PRB enthusiast and collector Andrew-Lloyd Webber:

It would not be right to neglect to mention those artists who had influenced the Pre-Raphaelite movement, such as the arrival of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait at the National Gallery in 1842, and after his death, the visionary printmaker and poet William Blake (1757 – 1827), with his disregard for academic conventions. Then there were the German artists Overbeck and Pforr known as the ‘The Nazarenes’ based in Rome, who drew elements from both Northern and Italian Renaissance styles, and the British painter William Dyce.

I have included a small gallery of some of my favourite Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

The Art of Storytelling

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“If a story is in you, it has got to come out.” ~ William Faulkner

Once upon a time there was a riveting story waiting to be told; a tale so compelling that it would change multitudinous lives forever. That story could be your story. There is a story in all of us. It’s the telling of it that makes the difference.

Will it be a page turner, will it suck them in to your world and spit them out at the end thinking about it for weeks, or maybe even years to come?

I love it when authors write books that do that to me. More often than not, it’s the writers with extensive life experience that can encapsulate universal emotions on the pages of their books.

CS Lewis writing-quote

The title of this blog post is suggestive of a broad and in-depth subject, and I feel that perhaps I have bitten off more than I can chew. It will be tough to do justice to in around a thousand words, so forgive me if I exceed my usual post length. Here go the basics!

Just like painting, drawing and composing music, writing is an art form. Crafting a compelling story takes time and skill. When writers have ideas, they work to express and articulate them in a way which will draw readers into their imagination using their own unique voice. They have to craft their story into something that will take their readers on a journey, and nothing less than transformation will do…

Why is it certain stories are considered classics, being read and retold through the ages?

There’s a reason Shakespeare has endured for 392 years since the first folios of his plays were published. They have captured our collective imagination in some measure because their themes hold as true today as they did in the Tudor period. Love, hate, jealousy, passion, ambition, religion and power struggles are every bit as evident in the world we now live in. Just watch the news.

The human family may have broadly evolved a bit since then – or maybe not – but there’s nothing interesting about a perfect family. Give us a contentious, dysfunctional family and you have the basis for a story. A querulous quarrel kicks off a family feud and hey presto, a story is underway…

writing quotes

What makes a good story?

Conflict is one of the key ingredients. So is a quest of some kind, such as defeating the nefarious wizard that murdered your parents when you were a baby, or indeed any kind of pathos and unfulfilled desire. Desire and resistance push and pull at us all, shaping our experience of life, unless we are enlightened enough to practise the Buddhist ethos of detachment. But detachment doesn’t work in fiction. Engagement does.

The full answer to this question is probably going to be different for each of us, depending on our personal preferences, but here is a list of what works for me:

  • Robert Harris quoteAn interesting or unusual opening with a hook to draw me in early on, but nothing too gimmicky. Novelty stimulates the brain.
  • A likeable, relatable protagonist to care about, facing a disaster or an unavoidable calling and orientation into his/her environment to place me at the heart of the action. Their unmet desire (either for their situation to return to normal, or for their situation to be different from the one they find themselves in is the platform for the choices they will make and the changes they will go through.
  • A mixture of three main types of struggle and conflict: internal, external and interpersonal.
  • Interesting characters that behave in accordance with their history and their unique personality traits, not acting in an incongruous manner just for the sake of a pre-determined plot.
  • A plot that is believable and makes sense (genre withstanding), where the scenes follow on logically and give me, as a reader what I want: both the familiar and the unexpected.
  • Enough tension and escalation to keep me interested in what happens next. That is not necessarily more action, but ramping up the tension in the form of not getting what they want and raising the stakes.
  • Well thought out descriptions to enhance the sense of place, not too much that will take me away from the story, but enough for me to visualise the scene and or the characters.
  • Pacing that naturally flows with the tension and action of the story, giving passages of intense action and also moments of perceived relief, building up to the climax of the story.
  • ‘Show don’t tell’ epitomised by Anton Chekhov’s quote: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
  • A theme that makes me question what I think I know; a quandary or moral dilemma that engages me and puts me in the characters’ shoes. I want to learn something about another world or about myself.
  • Clear language and a consistent voice that lacks verbosity but contains enough words to convey the story in a way that flows naturally. Words that are beautiful when read aloud, that perfectly fit the genre and story. It annoys me if a writer is using a daedalean word or phrase as if they are attempting to show how clever they are. I’m not averse to looking in the dictionary – in fact I spend much of my time there and chez Thesaurus – but misused vocabulary is amaroidal in the extreme!

Once you come up with the premise there is a certain amount of planning to do, however; I believe a writer’s imagination and creativity can be stifled by too much detailed outlining and deciding how it will end before you begin writing. Planning to the nth degree will kill off whole areas of undiscovered story because you are blinkered by following a set path.

Truman Capote writing-quote

I like to meander a bit. A trail that branches off from the main walkway can lead you to all sorts of terrain and unexpected views, ones that you wouldn’t have set eyes on had you not strayed a little. Maybe it’s because I’m quite a spontaneous person. New characters suddenly come to life, different settings appear, sub plots and possible outcomes fill your mind. The story emerges rather than suffocates.

Storytelling should be an organic activity. Sometimes ideas need time to incubate. You flesh them out, go back to them, change them and improve them. Characters take time to get to know; how they speak, how they react, what they want, what they desire and fear.

Robert Frost quote_writingThe best stories aren’t planned ­- they evolve. Writers could be likened to sculptors, carving their masterpieces out of rock, only we are carving out of words, sentences, paragraphs and scenes. And as the body of the work starts to take shape we see new curves and angles that we didn’t notice when we started with a solid block of stone. Grafting our material in this way will hopefully avoid writer’s block and allow us to transfer our creations from the depths of our grey matter into the hearts and minds of our readers.

By allowing free reign (within reason), to your creative process, you can lull your readers into a fictive dream that they won’t want to wake up from. You’ll all be on that winding, dangerous path together, maybe scared, excited or angry about what’s around the corner, but unable to stop yourselves from following it to its ultimate destination, instead of plodding along the yellow brick road to boredomville.

“Writing effective fiction requires being aware of the interplay of the unfolding narrative and your evolving ideas as you watch and respond to how everything merges and reforms itself into the final product. It’s a dance, and we’re just here to help introduce two partners – character and unmet desire – and then listen to the music and watch them take it from there within the constraints of our art form.” ~ Steven James (Story Trumps Structure).

The only formula you really need to know is: there are no formulas. Just considerations, such as: genre, setting, point of view, tension, believability, escalation, reader empathy, character intention, causality, twists & turns, and of course reader expectations.

Questions to ask

Steven James (author of the successful Patrick Bower thriller series) has come to the conclusion that he writes best when he asks himself these questions:

  1. What would this character naturally do in this situation? This is where the saying “truth is stranger than fiction” applies. Fiction has to be believable.
  2. How can I make things worse? This is where the increasing escalation and tension keep the story moving forward.
  3. How can I end this in a way that’s unexpected and inevitable? Readers want a great ending that both surprises them and gives them what they want at the same time.

By continually asking these questions you can avoid taking a detour down a dead end, whilst keeping all the key elements of your story on the right track.

“You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.” ~ Stephen King (On Writing).

A satisfying climax

In words, as in love, the climax is the pinnacle of the exercise! But getting there can be a lot of fun. Well, maybe not for your protagonist. Generally, they are going through hell. As a writer you want your readers to become so engrossed in your story that they will make it to the grand finale. They will be rooting for your protagonist, and when they arrive at the denouement, you don’t want the last act to leave them cold. You want to bid farewell to your story by giving them the ending they want, but not necessarily expected.

There’s plenty of advice out there. Stephen King in his book, On Writing states, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

A brilliant presentation and discussion about writing, linguistics and prose with Professor Steven Pinker and novelist Ian McEwan, from a recent gathering at the Royal Geographical Society:

I agree with Ian, please don’t take away the pause comma! Even Jane Austen isn’t free from criticism.

Useful Resources:

  • How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman & Howard Mittelmark
  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne & Dave King
  • On Writing by Stephen King
  • Story Trumps Structure by Steven James
  • The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
  • The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
  • From Pitch to Publication by Carole Blake
  • The Naked Author by Alison Baverstock
  • Getting Published by Harry Bingham
  • The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook
  • Blogs: Nathan Bransford, Joanna Penn, Catherine Ryan Howard

To become an artist takes faith in your own intuitive abilities. Trust your instincts and support them with intelligent review throughout the project. Let your voice be heard. I’d like to read your story someday…

 “The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible” ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Film Review: Still Alice (Guest Blog by Beth Britton)

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I should begin this blog by giving a very sizable ‘spoiler’ alert! If you haven’t yet seen Still Alice, then you may want to save this blog to read after you’ve watched the film, and by way of encouragement to view this multi award-winning movie, I would highly recommend it, albeit with a few caveats that I am going to explore in a moment.

Still Alice

Still Alice, based on the novel by Lisa Genova, has wowed critics and collected a series of gongs for its portrayal of how the world of 50-year-old Professor Alice Howland is affected by a diagnosis of younger-onset (early-onset) Alzheimer’s Disease. Alice is married with three children, and has built up a career as a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and is a world-renowned linguistics expert. Such is the devastation Alice feels at her diagnosis that she admits to her husband that she would have rather been diagnosed with cancer, an admission that isn’t uncommon.

Cancer v dementia

The comparisons between cancer and dementia are stark. In the UK, the government invests eight times more in cancer research than dementia research. When a person is diagnosed with cancer, a uniform package of post-diagnostic care and support wraps around the individual. When a person is diagnosed with dementia they may get some support, they may not, but there isn’t a uniform model of post-diagnostic support and it’s often subject to a postcode lottery. Particularly notable in relation to a younger person like Alice being diagnosed is that specialised younger-onset post-diagnostic services are even harder to find.

Even the stigma attached to cancer is less than dementia, and most significantly of all many cancers, if diagnosed early enough and treated, are curable, whereas no matter which form of dementia you are diagnosed with, it’s terminal. This reality has made dementia the most feared disease in people over 50, and in the UK, dementia is now the leading cause of death amongst women.

Diagnosis and beyond

What Still Alice shows brilliantly is the pain of diagnosis, and the way in which the layers of the diagnosed individual’s life are stripped away. Julianne Moore’s performance is extremely compelling, and I applaud her for the huge amount of research that she obviously put into depicting Alice to make the struggles that the character has so believable, so emotional and so heart-breaking.

Still Alice - beach

If anything, though, there is almost too much loss and trauma in Still Alice. Specifically, what disappointed me about the film was the apparent lack of support given to Alice and her family, making the prospect of living well almost impossible. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease given to a person of Alice’s age is obviously personally devastating given the implications on the career she has so studiously built up, but two factors made this diagnosis painful beyond belief.

Heart-breaking moments

Firstly, Alice’s Alzheimer’s is one of the rare types of younger-onset Alzheimer’s that is familial, so there is a 50/50 chance Alice’s three children will also have the gene, and if they do, they are certain to go on to develop the same form of Alzheimer’s as their mother. Learning that was, for me, the first really heart-breaking moment of the film. I was expecting Alice and her family to be offered counselling, but we only ever see Alice interacting with her neurologist.

The second particularly painful realisation is that the form of Alzheimer’s Alice has is likely to progress rapidly, and even allowing for the artistic licence of the film-making world there is no doubt that Alice deteriorates at an alarming rate. Given her and her family’s comfortable lifestyle and connections, not to mention the fact that they are articulate and capable of asking for help or searching for examples of good practice, I was really surprised to see almost no support mechanisms to help Alice as she lives with her dementia.

A missed opportunity to show living well

I would have expected someone to advise Alice and her family on coping mechanisms, and specifically someone to work with Alice to help her live as independently and actively as possible. Clearly she comes to rely very heavily on her mobile phone and we see her using a computer and Skype, but there is no other technology that is obvious to the audience.

Even more simple than that I would have expected some signage around the home and their beach house to help Alice navigate her way around. Instead, she is left to panic when she can’t remember where the toilet is, resulting in her eventually wetting herself, a highly poignant and very upsetting moment in the film.

Combined pictorial and word signs, plus pathways to important places like the toilet – signified by footsteps or lights – can really help a person with dementia to remain independent for longer in their own home and avoid embarrassing and upsetting accidents. Likewise, prompts in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom can help a person with dementia to complete daily tasks, and in relation to the bathroom, mirrors are often removed to avoid the person with dementia feeling distressed or confused by reflections.

Still Alice - ratings

Alice’s husband

Given Julianne Moore’s phenomenal performance it is easy to overlook some of the other characters in the film but one particular character drew me in. Alice’s husband, John, is a formidable figure who, like his wife, has a successful career. When Alice first discusses her concerns about her brain, he completely dismisses them, and questions her neurologist when Alice’s diagnosis is confirmed.

From that moment on, however, he is obviously caught in two worlds, much like so many other partners of people who are living with dementia. On the one hand he wants to be her husband and reassure and protect Alice, but he also feels a need to continue his successful career and to provide financial support. There is a particularly tender moment between Alice and John when he is supporting her to get dressed – a scene that so many family carers will recognise.

In the end it seems he almost admits defeat, and when younger daughter Lydia moves back home to look after her mother, her father poignantly breaks down and praises Lydia’s ability to put her career on hold to care for her mother, suggesting it is a commitment he could not make.

Highs and lows

The most uplifting moment of the film arguably comes when Alice stands up in an Alzheimer’s Association conference and talks candidly about her experiences of living with dementia. I have been fortunate to see many people who are living with dementia in the UK do likewise and the effect on audiences is really beyond words – it’s almost as if you can see people’s perceptions changing before your eyes.

For me, the darkest moment of the movie is when Alice, fairly soon after her diagnosis, makes a film leaving herself instructions on how to end her life. When she later discovers that film she tries to enact the instructions and is disturbed, leaving the audience to ponder the long-debated arguments over euthanasia and the right of a person with a terminal illness to end their own life.

In conclusion

What Still Alice has done brilliantly is to break down stereotypes – dementia isn’t just something older people develop, which Alice’s diagnosis clearly shows. It also depicts the struggles between intellect, articulation and the degeneration associated with dementia very accurately. It shows the turmoil that family relationships go through when a loved one is diagnosed with dementia and, particularly notably for younger people, it shows how the loss of your job and career strips away so much of how the person sees themselves and experiences their life.

Still Alice - Maria Shriver quoteThat said, (call me greedy), but I’m left wanting more. I wanted to climb into the screen and gently help to guide Alice, giving her support and some hope, enabling her to find the strategies that could have made her day to day life easier, helping her and her family to find the things to do that create special moments, and giving Alice and her loved ones some ideas around the opportunities to live well.

Currently there isn’t a cure for Alice’s Alzheimer’s, but the real achievement for me is to make the life of a lady who has had such a rich and rewarding 50 years prior to her dementia diagnosis as rich and rewarding as possible in her last years with Alzheimer’s. If Still Alice had managed to do that, it would have been a film that left me with more hope than sadness for the future of everyone diagnosed with dementia.

Beth Britton is a Freelance Campaigner and Consultant, Writer and Blogger specialising in issues affecting older people, health and social care and specifically dementia. Beth’s dad had vascular dementia for approximately the last 19 years of his life. She aims to provide support and advice to those faced with similar situations, inform and educate health and care professionals and the wider population, promote debate and create improvements in dementia care. Her work has been described as “Terrific,” “Amazing. REAL story of dementia,” “Insightful, heartfelt and truthful,” “Moving and inspiring.”