Dementia is defined as “a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.”
That’s about the most terrifying thing I can imagine. In speaking with Eric Leonardis, a neuroscientist friend, he pointed out that dementia is “a group of symptoms related to cognitive decline and memory loss, symptoms that are broader than Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is a specific form of progressive neurodegenerative dementia, so Alzheimer’s is dementia, but dementia may not necessarily be Alzheimer’s.”
But Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia and may afflict as many as six million Americans.
Alzheimer’s is particularly scary to me because it not only destroys memory but also one’s ability to think and do simple tasks. It’s not just about forgetting words but also about forgetting the meaning of things. Bub in George Romero’s Day of the Dead comes to mind as he looks at a razor and a book, and seems to be trying to remember what those things even mean or what purpose they might have served for him.
For me, zombie films have always been metaphors for dementia and Alzheimer’s. But for this list of films, I will steer away from zombies and look to films that depict dementia in ways that are either enlightening or narratively clever. So that’s why you won’t find Still Alice on the list. Although Julianne Moore gives a compelling performance, the film has the earnest and pedestrian approach of a WebMD symptom checker.
So here are my top 10 choices for films that look at dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and point out that getting old is not for the faint of heart. There are quite a few more titles out there but these are my personal favorites for the diverse array of reasons listed below.
10. Logan (2017, USA)
What’s a Marvel superhero film doing on a list of movies about dementia? Because it absolutely fits. I wanted to start the list here precisely because I wanted to show how pop culture can sometimes address serious issues in a peripheral way that is both interesting and helpful. The film (inspired by the Old Man Logan comics) is already considering themes of aging as it looks to its title character (Hugh Jackman returning for one last time) dealing with the fading of his powers but then it adds in Charles Xavier/Professor X (again Patrick Stewart) suffering from dementia.
So on the one hand, there is the irony of having a powerful telepath who could control the minds of others suffer from a brain disorder that robs him of the ability to control his own mind. And on the other hand, there is the tension that arises from the potential danger of how dementia can manifest itself in Xavier in highly destructive telepathic seizures. The film touches on the difficulty of caring for someone with dementia (in this case on a superhero scale) as well as the emotional pain of losing someone mentally and then physically.
9. Robot and Frank (2012, USA)
This lightweight sci-fi comedy gives us Frank Langella as an aging thief named Frank who is suffering from dementia. The burden of caring for Frank becomes too much for Frank’s son Hunter, so rather than put Frank in a home Hunter buys him a robot companion.
The robot is supposed to offer therapeutic care for Frank and to engage him in cognitive enhancing activities. The film is mostly light-hearted as Frank tries to get the robot to help him pick locks and commit crimes. It suggests that companionship and engaging in stimulating activity – like heists – might help someone suffering from dementia to stay more alert and focused. There is a touching moment when Frank has to decide whether or not to wipe the memory of his robot. If we are saddened at the idea of a robot losing its personality and sense of being by having its memory wiped, then it makes what Frank faces with the loss of his own memory even more poignant.
8. X (2022, USA)
Ti West’s homage to ’70s horror films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a genre gem. But in addition to all the horror tropes it has fun playing with, it also serves up a truly terrifying portrait of getting old.
Nothing seems to scare a young audience more than the idea of old people having sex or wanting to have sex. The audience I saw it with cheered all the kills but physically drew back in horror when the old lady Pearl came on to the young scriptwriter in the film. People even yelled out “hell no” and “stop.” Now Pearl might have been a bit bonkers before she got old but getting old certainly did not help her. It is not spelled out that Pearl has dementia but she definitely suffers from some kind of mental deterioration.
In some ways, it is the things she holds onto – memories of her youth, her beauty, her sexual desires, as well as the dreams that never materialized – that prompt her to extreme and dangerous behavior in her old age. This is a case where it is not the person suffering from dementia or whatever mental disorder Pearl has that we are concerned about but rather the people she encounters.
7. Vengeance (2009, Hong Kong)
Vengeance is first and foremost a Johnnie To gangster film but the idea of memory loss (not specifically called out as dementia or Alzheimer’s but it could easily be) is so cleverly used that I wanted to include it here. This stunning, bittersweet film does not come at the topic like a disease of the week melodrama but rather just injects it almost like a plot twist.
Costello (France’s wonderful Johnny Hallyday) wants revenge for the murder of his daughter’s family. So, he hires a trio of hitmen led by Kwai (the always brilliant Anthony Wong). Costello takes a Polaroid photo of each hit man and writes each one’s name on it so he won’t forget them. The reason is that Costello is losing his memory. This raises an ethical question for the hitmen: if they have accepted the job but their employer can no longer remember what he hired them for, are they still obligated to fulfill the contract? And what does revenge even mean if a person can’t remember the reason he is seeking it?
How this all plays out and the solution for what to do with Costello when his mind is completely gone make this film heartbreaking, brutal, and memorable.
6. Iris (2001, United Kingdom)
This biopic looks to novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley. The film uses two casts: Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville to play the couple when they were first married, and then Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent to play them in their later years. The film is based on Bayley’s 1999 memoir Elegy for Iris. The contrast the film serves up between the young Iris and the older one struggling with Alzheimer’s is sad and painful.
Dench conveys how the disease can impact an excellent mind, and Broadbent captures the stress and frustration that can arise from caring for someone with the disease. The film is especially good at conveying the sense of loss that both of them experience even though that loss is defined in very different terms for each.
5. The Father (2020, United Kingdom/France)
Directed by Florian Zeller and based on his French stage play, The Father looks to an aging man coping with dementia. Although the film descends into some trite melodrama at the end, the thing it does brilliantly is convey what dementia might feel like to the person suffering from it.
Anthony Hopkins plays the father and we see events play out through his eyes. The confusion the audience feels as the people in his life seem to change (his daughter is played by multiple actresses as are other characters) and events seem inconsistent, reflects the confusion, disorientation, and subsequent fear that someone suffering from dementia might experience. The first two-thirds of this film offers the best depiction of what dementia might feel like from the inside looking out, and it is devastating.
4. Away From Her (2006, Canada)
Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley looks to a couple whose marriage is tested when the wife develops Alzheimer’s. Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Julie Christie) have been married for more than four decades and they still seem sweetly in love. One day, Fiona attempts to put a pan in the freezer, and jokes, “Don’t worry, I’m just losing my mind.” But Fiona’s growing forgetfulness is diagnosed as Alzheimer’s.
Grant is determined to care for his beloved wife no matter what comes but Fiona has other plans. She doesn’t want to be a burden and decides to check herself into an upscale rest home where she starts to dote on a fellow patient named Aubrey who’s mute and wheelchair-bound. You wonder if this is her way of coping with her disease, as if intently focusing on someone worse off than herself will give her a new purpose in life. Fiona explains, Aubrey “doesn’t confuse me.” All of this frustrates and angers Grant who doesn’t know how to respond.
Christie’s performance shows us the tragedy of what’s lost when someone succumbs to Alzheimer’s.
3. Dick Johnson is Dead (2021, USA)
Death has rarely been funnier or more poignant than in this documentary about filmmaker Kirsten Johnson trying to cope with her father’s dementia and eventual demise. Both Kirsten and her father Dick realize that at a certain point in time he may no longer recognize his daughter or remember events in his life. So, she has the idea to make a film that imagines all the ways – some being violent accidents – that he could die. Then she holds a funeral for him while he is still alive and listening from inside his coffin as everyone mourns him.
Along the way she documents some of his declining mental faculties but also some of the love and joy the two share making the film. It is an inventive, touching, hilarious, and surprising portrait of facing dementia.
2. Amour (2012, France)
Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant, who recently died) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) are an elderly couple enjoying an active retirement. But one morning Anne freezes in the midst of her morning routine. Georges tries to snap her out of her catatonic state and when she finally responds, she has no memory of what just happened. What happened was she had a stroke and after unsuccessful surgery, she requests that she not be taken back to the hospital, and her mental and physical health then declines quickly.
In one respect, this is a film about the powerful and loving bond between a married couple. In that sense, Amour is the most tender and compassionate film from the usually cold-blooded Michael Haneke. But as Anne’s state grows worse, the film becomes a horror tale more in line with Haneke’s bleak, unflinching dramas (Funny Games, The White Ribbon). The film shows in brutal terms how painful it is to see someone you love deteriorate both physically and mentally before your eyes, and you’re powerless to do anything. Although the film does offer a drastic solution to ending the suffering of a loved one. Amour is both bleak and beautiful.
1. Vortex (2022, France)
Gaspar Noé dedicates his film, with a brutal honesty that foreshadows what is to come, “To all those whose brains will decompose before their hearts.”
Noé misleads us with the first scene, which is a lovely moment of the couple sitting outside on their patio and sharing a toast. The woman says, “Life is a dream.” And the husband smiles and adds, “A dream within a dream.” It is a sweet, serene moment. But brace yourself: the dream is about to turn into a nightmare. That is the only moment of comfort in an otherwise unflinching and devastating look at the horrors that people can face at the end of life.
The film lives up to Noé’s dedication as it does indeed offer an agonizing portrait of what a deteriorating mind can be like. Noé uses a split-screen to separate the wife’s and the husband’s differing experiences as they approach a bleak and unsentimental end. The husband busies himself with writing a book while his wife wanders aimlessly in a fog as if she cannot remember what she is supposed to be doing or even what purpose the objects around her serve. She looks painfully lost and it is heartbreaking to observe her. Vortex is more disturbing and terrifying than most horror films, and it offers a grim reminder of what might lie ahead for us as we age.
And if you are like me, you might need to hug a puppy or watch an episode of Mr. Bean after watching Vortex… or both.
Beth Accomando is the host of the KPBS Cinema Junkie Podcast and Blog.
