Amazon.com essential video: Based on the acclaimed book by neurologist Oliver Sacks, director Penny Marshall's hit 1990 drama stars Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Sayer is a neurologist who discovers that the drug L-Dopa can be used to "unlock" patients in a mental hospital from the mysterious sleeping sickness that has left them utterly immobilized. Leonard (Robert De Niro) is one such patient who awakens after being in a comatose state for 30 years, leaving Sayer to guide Leonard in adjusting to the world around him. Penelope Ann Miller costars as the daughter of another patient, with whom Leonard falls tenuously in love. Earning Oscar nominations for best picture, actor, and screenplay, this moving fact-based drama was a hit with critics and audiences alike. --Jeff Shannon
Penny Marshall's finest film. Awakenings is a depressing film but an important one to watch. Directed by Penny Marshall, Awakenings is based on a true story of patients who have come out of mental illness unscathed, well temporarily of course. Robert De Niro gives the performance of a lifetime and Robin Williams proves he is more than a funny, goofy actor. Penelope Ann Miller is stunning in this film as well, very under-rated actress. Give this '90s tearjerker a viewing, enjoy!
L Dopa Really Fixed Me Up! I think "Awakenings" is a good dramatization of the real life scientific study as presented in the book. But I'm more interested in the scientific story than a dramatazation of it that creates a love interest and basically has Robin Williams playing the role he'd redo in Patch Adams (albeit of course much better in "Awakenings") than actually relive the life of the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks who is of course fictionalized here and wrote the book. And the portrayal of people with disabilities takes the usual Hollywood stereotypes, they are shuffling zombies who lack humanity, their humanity is restored by a "miracle" (hate that word) drug L-Dopa and then lose it again but there is a hint they were human all along. Well to tell you the truth I know this may blow your mind but having a disability is something we all will experience or may already and all people should be considered human. However, it is true this was a clinical study and its accurate that that is how people are seen in a study or certainly by medical science at the time but as a survivor of tardive dyskinesia and tardive psychosis (a condition still in study), both Parkinsonian conditions although in this case enduced by neuraleptics who has had it treated by new medications in study (as well as study anti-psychotics that can't create these conditions) and began to recover, in experiencing this kind of recovery first hand (the movement disorders depicted in "Awakenings" are startingly similar to those I have and are well depicted)I found the original book and enlightening and did find the film moving I must admit but it got a bit maudlin and took liberties with the book. However, more importantly, it seemed out of the scope of this movie and much Hollywood fare that a person with this form of disability could not only be a part of society but could advocate for treatment and to recover. And I would hope that that could be changed. But as in the movie "hope" didn't get people anywhere. Scientific research in a humanistic fashion of which I am an active participant in and advocate did and when I look at "Awakenings" in this light yes there is something moving about but more in the spirit of the original research, not at at all as a "failed" experiment but one to build on so more people can recover as I did. And there is no time for "miracles" as with the original research it only gets in the way of what is ahead.
From the author of Tales of Ancient Xenar Yes, I saw this movie after it was released on VHS back in 1991. This movie wasn't one of Robin Williams' usual fare since comedy films are more his norm. But in this film, he performed well. This film was also different for its other actor, Robert DeNiro. Action films and Tough Guy films were more his norm. But in this film, he played a brain-disorder patient and played him very well. I once read a chapter in a text book and the events in this film are pretty accurately described in that text book chapter although the film leaves out a couple of fact. The disease suffered by the patients in this film is called Encephalitus Lethargica. And the name of the drug that was used to treat them was called L-dopa, but the text book calls it Levodopa. Of course now if you were to look up encephalitus lethargica on webmd, you'd get only articles about Parkinson's. But all in all, this was a good film. I would only give it 4 and a half stars, but since half stars cannot be given here, I'm foerced to give it a full 5.
Der Panther Based on a true story by the brilliant neurologist and writer, Oliver Sacks, "Awakenings" portrays lives of people who are rendered inert for decades from an earlier brain inflammation, encephalitis, and of the doctor who wouldn't give up on them. Dr. Sacks' books are filled with fascinating accounts of people who live with incredible brain aberrations, and "Awakenings" is no exception. Our own lives are enriched by this glimpse into the lives of human beings such those in this story/film. For human they are, despite their being frozen like statues in a wax museum. Dr. Sayers, played by Robin Williams, works tirelessly (well, actually he works so late that he falls asleep, so I guess he does get tired!) championing the cause of his patients and their treatment with the drug L-dopa, the new "cure" which he has discovered. Leonard, played masterfully by Robert Di Nero, struggles to live a full life again, enabled by the medication. In the process he not only demonstrates the human courage and drive to be truly alive, but he also teaches Sayers about the effects of the treatment over time. "Learn from me", he begs. The diligent but shy doctor also learns to express his awakening feelings by finally forming a relationship with his devoted nurse, Eleanor, played by Julie (Marge Simpson) Kavener. Kudos to all, including director, Penny Marshall!
That's all I'm going to say--no "spoilers"--enjoy the film!
Oh, and watch for Leonard's (De Niro's character) apt reference to the poem, "The Panther" (Der Panther), written by turn-of-the-century (19th) German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. The panther becomes so weary and dulled from the vision of the bars of the cage he is in that he can't "think" or feel anymore. This insightful poem is a favorite of mine, and I think that it captures quite well the situation of these people, held captive by the "bars" of their illness.
A stunning film, must-see for all. Director Penny Marshall's Awakenings is being promoted as a "hurrah for the handicapped" movie, but it's much more than that. Derived from an account published in 1973 by neurologist Oliver Sacks, this too-strange- not-to-be-true story is magical because it doesn't really try to be - as
Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), the miracle-working character based on Dr. Sacks, says, "We have to adjust to the realities of miracles."
The realities, as dramatized in Steven Zallian's script, are these: In 1969, Dr. Sayers accepts employment at a chronic-care hospital in the Bronx and is mysteriously drawn to a group of catatonic patients referred to as "living statues." Convinced that the patients are cognitively and emotionally alive, despite their external fossilization (some have been immobile for more than 30 years), he investigates their histories. At first, he is stymied by the guesswork diagnoses on record - "atypical schizophrenia"; "atypical hysteria" - and mutters to his nurse (Julie Kavner), "You'd think at a certain point, all these 'atypical' somethings would amount to a 'typical' something." They do: Dr. Sayer discovers that the statues have in common an episode of viral encephalitis.
The miracle is this: Aware that the experimental compound L-DOPA has proved effective as a treatment for Parkinsonism, a disease Dr. Sayer believes resembles the condition in which his statues find themselves, he proposes using the drug on one of them, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), a middle-aged man who began "disappearing" into brief episodes of paraylsis at the age of 11 and was permanently hospitalized nine years later, in 1939. When the drug "awakens" Leonard, Dr. Sayer asks for permission to prescribe it to the rest of his post-encephalitic patients.
At this juncture, Awakenings itself awakens - it sloughs off the "hurrah for the handicapped" genre and becomes a movie about the handicap of the human condition in general. Unfortunately, it's impossible to discuss what transpires next without giving the story away, but it can be reported that the subsequent events, for all their atypical specificity, become a blanket metaphor for typical human life (much of which is spent sleepwalking) - it's evident that Dr. Sayer was "mysteriously" attracted to the statues because he is one of them.
Marshall, director of Big and, in another life, Laverne on Laverne and Shir ley, elicits performances from Williams and DeNiro that are exceptional. The former, who can't help being funny, is profoundly serious as the emotionally stunted physician unable to heal himself, and the latter, who can't help being serious, is profoundly funny as the emotionally open patient able to heal his physician. The two strong men are complemented by two stronger women, Kavner as the doctor's sympathetic nurse, and the aged Ruth Nelson (her career began in 1926) as the patient's patient mother. Awakenings is a small, simple movie about a large, complex issue, the waste of human opportunity. It could have been made by Thornton Wilder's Emily, who dies at the end of Our Town and from the cemetery exhorts the living to come fully alive. Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor.
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