Awakenings (1990)

Release date: 1991-01-11
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Penny Marshall
Production Co: Columbia Pictures, Parkes/Lasker productions
Genre: Drama, Biography
Rating: 7.8/10
Length: 2h 1min

Storyline

1969. Dr. Malcolm Sayer is hired as a clinical physician at a psychiatric hospital in the Bronx, despite he only having a research background. The job is not ideal on his side as he has difficulties relating to people which is the reason he has focused on research projects not involving human subjects, while the hospital hires him somewhat out of desperation in not finding anyone else with the qualifications who wants the job. Most of his patients are in a semi-catatonic state and are housed in what some of the orderlies coin the "garden" ward, where all they can do for the patients is water and feed them. He notices that some of the patients, despite their generally catatonic state, respond in unusual ways to certain stimuli. In doing some research, he also finds that some common bonds between these patients are that they suffered from encephalitis in the 1920s or 1930s, and that their physical states are like they have Parkinson's disease frozen in time. As such, he is able to ...

Plot Keywords

psychiatric hospital, catatonia, bronx new york city, cynicism, death, dying, frustration, happiness, illness, medical experiment, medical profession, anger, one word title, title directed by female, title spoken by character, based on novel, based on true story, coma, doctor patient relationship, wheelchair

Short Review

Williams gives his best "straight" performance, shorn of all his marvelous manic vaudeville. The man he plays here is not a performer, which he was even in Dead Poets Society, but simply a man.