Glenda Jackson returns to screen with 'Elizabeth Is Missing'

NEW YORK (AP) - Only one project lured two-time Academy Award winner Glenda Jackson back to the screen after an absence of 25 years: 'œElizabeth Is Missing.'ť

The film is a mystery but so much more - a powerful and moving look at dementia, a pressing emotional and financial issue for many nations with aging populations. Jackson plays a woman lost in the fog between the past and present.

'œThis is something that as a society, we have to look at seriously," the actor told The Associated Press by phone from England. 'œIt's a big black hole.'ť

The 90-minute film aired in the UK in 2019 to great acclaim and American viewers get a chance to see it starting Sunday via Masterpiece on PBS.

Jackson, 84, plays the role of Maud, who is in the throes of Alzheimer's disease. Her home is covered with taped-up reminders and instructions - 'œDon't forget to lock up'ť and 'œNo more bread'ť - and her pockets are stuffed with scrawled notes she wrote to remind herself of events and appointments.

'œThe unique thing about it that isn't often done in pieces about dementia is that it takes the viewer inside the experience of living with dementia - the fear, the panic, the frustration,'ť said Sarah Brown, an executive producer.

Viewers meet Maude just as she is insisting she find out what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, who seems to have vanished. This disappearance becomes linked in her increasingly chaotic mind with a much older one - of her sister in 1949.

The film has interwoven timelines and Maud seamlessly switches between her 1949 past and present, revealing a sympathetic and unsentimental portrait of dementia.

'œNobody listens to me. Am I invisible or something?'ť says Maude. Later she melts down at a restaurant: 'œI want to scream but it won't come out!'ť

Jackson, who picked up Academy Awards for 1971's 'œWomen In Love'ť and 1974's 'œA Touch of Class,'ť swapped film and TV for politics in 1992 when she became a Labour Member of Parliament.

She used to visit senior centers - they're called care homes in Britain - as part of the job and saw first-hand the effects of the disease.

'œThe issue is one that I've been banging on about for a very long time, certainly when I was still a member of parliament,'ť she said. 'œWe are looking at a situation where if we continue to live longer than we have in the past, care homes are going to be central to how we actually look after ourselves.'ť

To get into the role, Jackson consulted with the group Dementia UK and its head of research and publications, Dr. Karen Harrison Dening.

'œI asked her one of the things I found most difficult to get around with was actually what motivated this woman,'ť said Jackson. The response was one word: frustration - that no one took her seriously or that she couldn't remember.

Jackson performance even rattled Jackson herself. 'œThere were a couple of days where I was convinced that I'd contracted the disease, but that's par for the course, really,'ť she said.

Other recent films that have tackled Alzheimer's disease and dementia include 'œAway From Her,'ť 'œStill Alice,'ť 'œThe Notebook'ť and 'œThe Savages.'ť

Brown credits writer Emma Healey, whose book of the same name was the source of the film's adaptation, for finding a compelling way to show mental decline.

'œIn a way, Emma Healey used a mystery to draw the viewers in but really that was the Trojan horse to which we understood the disease,'ť she said.

It is Jackson's searing portrayal that resonates. She plays Maude as angry and horrified, embarrassed and ferocious. It is a role not unlike her recent Broadway work in 'œKing Lear,'ť who descends into madness.

'œIt is a fierce performance. It is actually '~Lear'-like in many ways,'ť said Brown. 'œShe brings the fierceness as well as the tenderness as well as the humor - and sometimes all in one scene.'ť

Jackson says strangers have come up to her to share the toll the disease has taken on their families, both physically and emotionally. She's lately seen British politicians embrace the seriousness of dementia, especially in light of how COVID-19 has ravaged nursing homes.

'œLet's hope it has a similar reaction to those people who are suffering from the reality of these diseases that it seems to have done in this country,'ť Jackson said. 'œThe need for care is going to increase in future.'ť

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits