Me and Lydia, a Character I Relate To

(SPOILER ALERT!)

Every now and again when I watch a movie I find myself relating to a character on a deep level. In a previous blog article I wrote about how I related to multiple characters in the animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” Now I would like to talk about Lydia Howland, a character played by Kristen Stewart in the movie “Still Alice.” 

“Still Alice” stars Julianne Moore as Alice Howland. She’s the type of person that seems to have it all; she has a prestigious and honorable position as a linguistics professor at Columbia, is married to a doctor (played by Alec Baldwin), and has three children (with a grandchild on the way) now grown. Tragically, Alice discovers shortly after her 50th birthday that she has early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease; while most people who sadly get Alzheimer’s do so when they’re in their old age, Alice gets it when she’s still relatively young.

Lydia is one of Alice’s three daughters. She’s played amazingly by Kristen Stewart in a film already filled with wonderfully engrossing performances (Julianne Moore herself won the Oscar for Best Actress with this movie). Lydia is very much the odd duck in the family; while her parents work in the respected positions of being a doctor and a professor, and her siblings also have more traditional jobs, Lydia is working to become an actress. She has a small amount of success, being featured in the play “Angels in America,” and moves to California. But no matter where she is in the world, Lydia keeps in touch with her mother Alice, having regular Skype sessions with her and having deep conversations, whether in person or not; for example, shortly after being seen by her mother in the play “Angels in America,” Alice tells her about old friends of hers that had died due to AIDS.

This brings me to Alice’s husband John. Earlier in the film, shortly after Alice gets her devastating diagnosis, she visits a home for elderly people with Alzheimer’s. She sees that the vast majority of them are women, many with still living husbands who just don’t want to or feel that they can take care of them; upon seeing this she wonders if this is her fate, and even considers suicide. As her diagnosis gets worse her husband John gets offered a position at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, and wants to move there despite his wife’s suffering. At one point, shortly after Lydia has moved to California, John has a meeting with his two other adult children, discussing what to do. During this conversation John expresses disgust at the fact that his daughter Lydia has moved to California, feeling that she’s abandoned the family and in particular her suffering mother.

Let’s examine this for a moment. We have an adult man who has lived a very full life, getting married to a woman whom I assume he said to in his vows, “for better or for worse.” He already has a great and probably fairly high-paying job as a doctor. He no longer has to care for his children, so he should have at least some time to care for his wife (and he could probably use his expertise as a doctor to help). Meanwhile, we have his daughter Lydia, who is just beginning to truly live her life. She moved to another state to pursue her own dreams, like many young people do after graduating from either high school or college. And despite the distance between them, Lydia continues to have a strong relationship with her mother, whether or not her own father chooses to recognize it.

In the end, as Alice’s condition gets worse, Lydia ends up moving back to New York to care for her while continuing the pursuit of her acting career there. Her father meanwhile ultimately decides to move to Minnesota for his new job. Maybe it was the right decision for Lydia, but it wasn’t a decision that I feel she should have felt obligated to make. She was keeping her relationship with her mother strong and loving, something a lot of people at that age don’t do; in fact there are people much older than her that don’t do as much. And despite all of the hardships her mother and overall immediate family were going through, she still had a right to pursue her own life.

There’s probably a lot we can say about this movie as far as themes, especially about the ending. One could talk about how women in general are oftentimes expected to sacrifice more when it comes to their dreams and desires than men. One could also talk about how no matter what one does, someone in a person’s family may judge them for what they do with their lives or about how they relate to other people. 

        Personally I can relate to the latter. I’m not going to tell you the specifics or who was involved, because there are people whose privacy I do not wish to invade. But there are relatives who judged me harshly for not supposedly being a good enough son to my own father (he unfortunately died of cancer a few years back). At the time I was living in the state of Washington, and he was down in Florida; briefly I considered moving back to Florida after his diagnosis, but ultimately decided not to (I have my reasons). Still I talked to him on the phone fairly frequently (and did ultimately visit him down in Florida), although for a few (but not all) of my relatives, that wasn’t enough. Keep in mind that these were people who had seldom ever called, texted, messaged, or otherwise contacted me, some not for twenty years, so really who were they to talk? There were even relatives whom I found out about their weddings (and the fact that they had even been engaged in the first place) after the fact thanks to Facebook. Honestly after attending my father’s funeral, there are a few relatives (I won’t name names here) whom I will never be in the same room with again, both for my own mental well-being and honestly because I fear for own my safety with a few of them. Unlike Lydia in the movie, I didn’t completely change my life for my father. And while Lydia made perhaps a noble choice, I made the choice that was ultimately right for me, and I have never once regretted it.