Directed by: Penny Marshall
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams, John Heard, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, Max von Sydow, Penelope Ann Miller
Awakenings tells the true story of a group of catatonic patients who, with help of a sympathetic doctor and a drug called L-DOPA, briefly sprung them from their catatonia in the summer of 1969. The doctor is Malcolm Sayer (Williams), based on Dr. Oliver Sacks who wrote the book on which the film is based. He had zero experience working with live patients during his medical career before 1969, but he brought a special outsiders' perspective and a lack of cynicism which seemed to permeate the ward which housed the patients.
Sayer is intrigued by Leonard Lowe (DeNiro), a 40ish patient who had been hospitalized since he was a boy. He was a normal seven year old one day and then he suddenly lost all muscular function leaving him in catatonia without the ability to move. Yet, one day Dr. Sayer accidentally drops something near Leonard and Leonard instinctively catches it. He experiments on other patients who can catch baseballs thrown their way, but seemingly out of instinct and reflex. Sayer takes his findings to his superiors, who dismiss them. One weakness of Awakenings is how Sayer's superiors are portrayed. They are so over-the-top skeptical and cold that they come across as movie villains which Dr. Sayer has to defeat in order to help his patients.
Sayer soon seeks counsel of a top neurologist (von Sydow), who suggests the "frozen" people can not be thinking or feeling anything because "the implications would be unthinkable," But Sayer persists, forming his theory that the paralyzed patients may be suffering from a rare form of Parkinson's disease in which the patients' tremors are so severe the muscles appear to be not moving at all. Sayer secures the drug L-DOPA and uses Leonard as his test patient. One night, Leonard "awakens" and moves around on his own for the first time in years. The other patients soon awaken and experience freedom from their imprisonment in their own bodies. Awakenings compassionately deals with the emotions of the patients, which range from joy to relief to anger and for Leonard his first crush on the daughter of another hospital patient (Miller).
The newfound freedom comes with a price, which includes harsh side effects of the medication and a possible recession into catatonia again. Leonard is at first childlike and happy as he attempts to process the world around him, but soon the medication makes him angry and paranoid. His devoted mother (Nelson) is astonished at his behavior. Sayer himself throws himself into his work while forsaking a personal life. He doesn't seem to notice the attentions of a nurse (Kavner), who clearly has a crush on him. As Leonard angrily battles to avoid receding into his former state, he tells Sayer, "You're not alive. I was asleep. What's your excuse?"
Awakenings contains moments of genuine power and sadness which are anchored by the strong performances. Robin Williams plays against type as the reticent and timid Sayer who learns to be a doctor and more so how to deal with his own life. It is a wonderful performance, which showed a different side to Williams in which his manic standup comic persona took a back seat. DeNiro (Oscar nominated here) provides Leonard with depth, emotion, and subtle humor, plus it's a superior physical performance. I also liked the range displayed by Nelson, who visits her son every day and fears losing him again, either to the disease or to the fact that she is not the only woman in her son's life now.
Directed by Penny Marshall, Awakenings (like Marshall's previous film Big) mines the extraordinary situation for all of the humor and humanity it can muster. There are laughs and sad moments, all of which aren't cheap payoffs, but richly earned.
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