Stream it now Awakenings 1990

 

Robert De Niro does magnificent, with Robin Williams following up just as good. It shows the true touching story of robin williams and how he finds the cure, only to have a somewhat unwanted ending the viewers wish did not have to happen. it delivers a good story, with many mixed emotions, as well as great acting from the cast

Definitely one of the best and most beautiful movies ever made.

Heartbreaking, touching tale. It's a brilliant film but it's such a downer that I don't care about rewatching it.

Amazing movie. Robin Williams and Robert De Niro make a great team. Williams actually does an exceptional job in a serious role which was refreshing to see when actors that do annoying comedies do a serious movie and excel at it (Jim Carrey-Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind). Robert De Niro checks off another different role on the list. He perhaps gives the best performance as a mentally challenged or disabled person (Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, Russell Crowe as John Nash, and Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown are the others that might contend for that title). None the less De Niro leaves his tough guy persona and really excels as the unfortunate handiccaped patient. This movie was nominated for best picture and should have lost like it did, but to Goodfellas not that piece of shit Dances with Wolves. The big robbery was De Niro losing best lead actor to jeremy Irons. I thought he showed so much talent that year by playing the tough guy Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas and the complete opposite Leonard Lowe in this movie he really showed his range that year.

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 Shirley, 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.

Three stars with a plus, out of four.

Touching and inspirational. Stellar performances by De Niro and Williams punctuate an already incredible story. This is absolutely a must see film. A rarity that will make you tear up one minute and laugh out loud the next.

Great movie that will make you cry for Robert De Niro. He did such an amazing job. You would really think he had this horrible disease. Robin Williams also did great. The story was touching and overall amazing.

This is one of those lost treasures that many should see. Human spirit, humor, and hope fill this winner with the ingredients of success.

"Hello. My name is Leonard Lowe. It has been explained to me that I've been away for quite some time. I'm back."

WIlliams plays roles in slapstick and humor,but this is a more serious challenge for him; As Dr. Sayer,he plays someone willing to help his patients enjoy a healthier life.DiNiro plays Leonard Lowe,who is desperate for a way to stop his shaking all over;WhenSayer tries various formulas and changes to the patients' medication,he notices things don't go right.I enjoy this film, because it portrays a medical hero who is a champion for all people.