AWAKENINGS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: What is it like to wake up after having
slept for decades? What is it like to discover the means to
wake such people up? Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro star
in one of the most intriguing films of the year. Rating: +2
(-4 to +4).
With the possible exception of THE GODFATHER PART III, the most avidly awaited film of the winter season is probably Penny Marshall's AWAKENINGS. Robin Williams stars in the fictionalized telling of a modern medical miracle performed by neurologist Oliver Sacks. In the role of Dr. Sacks-- whose name has been changed to Dr. Malcolm Sayer--is Robin Williams. Whatever Williams is doing to improve his acting, it is working very well; his acting noticeably improves with each succeeding film he makes. His Malcolm Sayer is a real departure. Rather than his usual self-assured characters, Sayer is painfully introverted but caught up in an idea that becomes a dream and then a reality.
The film begins with a prologue in 1932. Young Leonard Lowe is having occasional fits of shaking in his right arm. As time passes, the fits are getting worse and Leonard is becoming seriously frightened by them. Flash forward thirty-seven years to 1969. Malcolm Sayer, a researcher in neurology, has spent the last five years working with earthworms in a project that failed. Now he is looking for work and is hired to care for the incurably ill at a Bronx hospital, a job he finds unnerving until his curiosity is aroused by several patients who appear to be living vegetables but who show odd signs of consciousness. The common belief is that there cannot be any mental activity but only because the alternative is too agonizing to contemplate. Sayer thinks that the symptoms he is seeing may be an extreme form of the same symptoms caused by an unrelated disease, Parkinson's disease. The drug L-DOPA alleviates Parkinson's symptoms and Sayer thinks it may work on these patients. The guess turns out to be correct and people who have been mental vegetables for three decades or more begin to wake up. The film then becomes the dual story of Dr. Sayer and the awakening patients, particularly Leonard Lowe (now played by Robert DeNiro).
Rarely does a film really bring home the value of being free to do what most of the world takes for granted. In YENTL it was the right to learn. CHARLY was a paean to the ability to think. AWAKENINGS is about the ability to experience life at all, to see the world around us. DeNiro does a fine job playing the afflicted Lowe grasping for life when he can. Julie Kavner is also notable as a nurse with faith in Sayer. She is a fine character actress. Disappointingly, however, the film never explores the question it raised so fervently. How conscious are Sayer's patients? What was their consciousness like in their vegetable state? These questions are never satisfactorily answered.
AWAKENINGS is not a great film. At times it is too pat. At 121 minutes it is too short to do justice to the story of both the doctor and the patients. My rating then is +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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