Charles Henderson

Movie Report: Awakenings

Summer 2008

Awakenings, a film by Penny Marshal (Laverne and Shirley) starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro is a film based on a book by Dr. Oliver Sacks.  In this movie, Robin Williams plays Doctor Sayer who is comfortable and content with doing research on non-human samples but needing a job and the hospital in dire need of a physician he takes the job at a chronic hospital in the Bronx in 1969.  There he discovers patients who seem to be like “statues”, unresponsive for years and yet through a little bit of research (what he knows best) he discovers that the patients may actually be aware and not as hopeless as the other doctors have written them off to be.  De Niro plays Leonard a patient suffering from the after effects of encephalitis.  Sayer likens the catatonic state to that of an extreme Parkinson case and with that thought he hears of a new drug for Parkinson patients; L-Dopa.  Sayer’s research leads to the experimental trail with Leonard who after a few test doses ‘awoke’ from his thirty year catatonic “sleep”.  This breakthrough gave Sayer the respect from his peers and a new found confidence in his ability to work with humans as opposed to earthworms.  After awakening the remaining patients (with the generosity of donations because the cost was 12,000 dollars a month) the others awoke and the problem of missing 10, 20, 30 years of one’s life became a reality to the patients as well as the staff.  After a while the patients went back to their catatonic state (Leonard first) and this new breakthrough lead to more research being done on this issue.  Dr. Sayer is still practicing today (as of 1990) and he has had other awakenings but none as profound as those in 1969 when the new drug L-Dopa was first prescribed.