Alzheimer's in the media

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article provides a list of media documents portraying alzheimer's disease as a critical feature of the main plot:

• Away From Her is the Academy award nominated feature-length directorial debut of English Canadian actor Sarah Polley. The film is based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain", from the 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. The film stars Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie as a couple whose marriage is tested when Christie's character begins to suffer from Alzheimer's and moves into a nursing home, where she loses virtually all memory of her husband and begins to develop a romance with another nursing home resident.^[1][2]

• Grace is a documentary that profiles the life of Grace Kirkland, beginning shortly after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and ending at her death seven years later. The documentary tracks Grace through the progression of her symptoms and the changing role of her caregiver husband, Glenn Kirkland. This Whiteford-Hadary production was aired on American public television stations in 1991 and has received a regional Emmy Award (1992).^[3]

• Iris is a 2001 film that tells the story of Irish novelist Iris Murdoch and her relationship with John Bayley. The film contrasts the start of their relationship and their later life, when Murdoch (played by Dame Judi Dench) was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.^[4] The film is based on Bayley's memoir Elegy for Iris.

• TV documentaries Malcolm and Barbara - A Love Story (1999) and Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell (2007), featured Malcolm Pointon who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 51. Over a period of 14 years Paul Watson followed Malcolm and Barbara Pointon's lives. The documentary follows the couple as Malcolm succumbs to the disease and shows the harsh reality faced by caregivers. The 2007 programme was the target of controversy when initial media claims that the finale purported to show Malcolm's death from the disease, but insider sources revealed that in the closing shots of the documentary actually show Malcolm slipping into a coma from which he never recovered. The argument overshadowed the importance of the documentary, and when it aired on 8th August 2007 the narrator informs us that "Malcolm is in a coma, and dies three days later."^[5][6]

• The 2006 Japanese film Memories of tomorrow (Ashita no Kioku), starring Ken Watanabe, tells a story of a 49-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer's disease and burden of care put on his wife.^[7]

• The BBC radio soap opera The Archers has had a long-running subplot about the development of Alzheimer's in character Jack Woolley,^[8] which won a Mental Health Media Award in 2007.^[9]

• The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer's (2004)^[10]

• The 2004 American film The Notebook is a fictional story about a woman with Alzheimer's and how her husband copes with the disease. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams star in this film adapted from Nicholas Sparks' novel.^[11]

• Thanmathra (Malayalam:Molecule) (2005) is a Malayalam film directed by Blessy which portrays the effects of Alzheimer's disease on the life of an individual and his family.^[12]

• U, Me aur Hum (translates as: You, me and us) a 2008 Bollywood film, with Kajol Devgan playing an Alheimer's Disease patient.

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