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Regular
Price $14.94
Starring:
Robert De Niro,
Robin Williams,
Julie Kavner,
Ruth Nelson,
John Heard,
Directed By:
Penny Marshall,
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Release Date: 1990-12-20
Studio: Sony Pictures
Format:
Anamorphic,
Closed-captioned,
Color,
Dolby,
DVD-Video,
Widescreen,
NTSC,
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Editorial Reviews and
DVD Information about
Awakenings
Amazon.com
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
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Customer Reviews for
Awakenings
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.Awakenings
GREAT MOVIE A MUST BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have not seen this movie in years but when i did see it i think i saw it on hbo. This is such a great movie it is great for the whole family to enjoy and also it is based on a real life story. This is a MUST BUY!!!!!!!! GREAT MOVIE EASY FIVE STAR!!!!!!!!Awakenings
A revelation
Dramatization of the book by Dr. Olive Saks, it is the true account of a research project taken on by Dr. Sayers (pseudonym) at a hospital for chronic neurological patients. These patients have been catatonic for years after having suffered some form of encephalitis. Dr. Sayres believes they have some degree of awareness and are not just vegetables and he has an idea on how to "awaken" them from this frozen state. The outcome of the research and the things learned from it are heartening in spite of appearing not to be. There are people "in there" and this is a film that should be seen and a book that should be read by everyone who has a loved one or family member in such a state, or in a coma, or in a so-called "vegetative" state. They might not be as unaware as we think. Also the medical community needs to be less tunnel-visioned. Not every medical "fact" this year will be a fact next year.Awakenings
Psych. class +++++
Great for high school psych class. Kids liked it and it is based on a true story.Awakenings
This 'Awakening' made me cry......
I still remember this film, so many years later. AWAKENINGS made me realize that Robert De Niro had the talent and the ability to portray a deeply human and profound character, Leonard, a man who has lived in his own world for many years, in a very sensitive way. He wasn't just a hit man or a thug! This role solidifies his depth as a performer and was worthy of much praise. Dr. Malcom Sayer (Robin Williams) a shy man, decides to test the effects of the drug L-Dopa on catatonic patients in his hospital--Leonard being one of them. It is a miraculous feat that he seemingly brings those under his care "back from the dead." The transformation is astonishing. It's also amazing that this was based on a true story that occured in the life of Dr. Oliver Sachs. The film also stars Julie Kavner (best known as the voice of Marge Simpson on THE SIMPSONS), as Dr. Sayer's devoted nurse. The film has moments of tremendous joy and heartwrenching setbacks. It doesn't have the 'typical' Hollywood ending, but that doesn't take away from the feeling that awakens in you upon watching AWAKENINGS. Powerful and very memorable.Awakenings
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