frankm@microsoft.UUCP (Frank Maloney) (01/15/91)
AWAKENINGS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
Penny Marshall, the director of AWAKENINGS, has a way with actors,
as anyone who has seen BIG will attest. The actors in this case are
Robin Williams as a painfully shy doctor in a so-called chronic hospital
in the Bronx, Robert De Niro as one of his patients whom he awakens from
a decades-long "absence," Julie Kavner as Williams' nurse and supporter,
an ensemble of wonderful character actors as other patients, and finally
real-life patients in a real-life hospital.
The hospital is not ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST; sadism and
power are not the problems when Williams shows up, albeit reluctantly,
as the new doc-on-the-block. The problem is routine, lack of curiosity,
acceptance of the received wisdom about warehousing the chronics,
presumably untreatable victims of unknowable mental disorders. John
Heard puts in an appearance as the stern, slightly cynical head doctor,
whose job, it seems, is to rain on everyone's parade. (This is the same
John Heard who played a similarly grim therapist in the Dyan Cannon
movie I saw in previews earlier this last week.)
This is a movie that I think will stay with one for a long time
because the story is so intriguing and the performances so strong.
Williams discovers by accident that a group of patients who appear to
totally out of communication with our world are maintaining slender
threads of contact. He deduces a connection with an encephalitis
epidemic in the 1920s and a possible cure in a new drug, L-DOPA (this
being 1969). Williams experiments on De Niro, who awakens to find that
30 years of his life have disappeared. There is much of interest in the
reactions of the patient and the family to this situation, the loving
mother who doesn't really want her little boy to not need her, the man
who finds that his family has disappeared in various way while he was
"away," and so forth.
Williams plays against type and plays very well, with hardly any of
his comic persona peeping through. He is never given a chance to
extemporize, a la GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM, and turns an understated,
disciplined performance. (Julie Kavner, his nurse, is her reliably
wonderful self, just as we've seen in so many Woody Allen movies and
elsewhere; but she is pretty much playing her same stock character,
delightful as it is, in contrast to Williams.)
De Niro turns an amazingly detailed performance in a highly
physical role of a man once total rigid like a statue, then gradually
loosening up, learning to move again, then as the cure wears off,
developing alarming tics and contortions of a body out of control. The
only problem with De Niro's performance is that is De Niro, who may be
too familiar a talent for us ever to forget that this is De Niro turning
in another Oscar-nomination performance.
Some of the character actors that I would like mention en passant
include Anne Meara, who was once, I believe, a stand-up comic, the late
Dexter Gordon as the patient who will not or cannot speak except through
his piano playing, and a particularly splendid Alice Drummond who has
one of the best lines in the movie about knowing that the year is 1969
but needing it to be 1926 (the year she "went to sleep").
Some have complained that the movie suffers from an unnatural
symmetry with De Niro trapped in his body and Williams trapped in his
shyness and the two of them awakening to life, trying to help each
other. I find this to be a thematic strength in the movie, the kind of
quality that raises it above the disease-of-the-month club. It gives
the movie meaning and resonance for all of us with message of
appreciating life and having the courage to fight for it, a message not
that different from the carpe diem theme of DEAD POETS SOCIETY, Robin
Williams' second best movie to date.
I recommend AWAKENINGS. It is a strange and haunting story,
excellently presented. You will very likely want to see more than once
in fact.
--
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloneyleeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (01/15/91)
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
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.comlmann@jjmhome.UUCP (Laurie Mann) (01/22/91)
AWAKENINGS
A film review by Laurie Mann
Copyright 1991 Laurie Mann
It should be an interesting Academy Award ceremonies this year,
when the lead performers in the movies of Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall
(ex-spouses who, apparently, do not get along well) will probably win
the top awards--Kathy Bates for Misery and Robert DeNiro for AWAKENINGS.
AWAKENINGS is an extraordinary movie. It has some parallels to
RAIN MAN and CHARLY, but it's much stronger. Penny Marshall excels at
setting a mood, she makes you understand what it's like to be a child in
the late 1920s in the first ten minutes of the film. The action jumps
ahead forty years, to a dismal, depressing psychiatric hospital in New
York, where Dr. Sayer (Robin Williams) reluctantly takes a job as as
researcher. He's used to working with earthworms but, sadly, the
long-time catatonics he comes into contact with aren't much better off.
Dr. Sayer believes he sees flickers of life behind the catatonic
masks of his patients. While some can bearly move, they have some
reflexes, and a few seem to respond a little to their surroundings. One
patient, Lucy, catches her glasses, and walks along the pattern on the
floor, only stopping when the pattern ends. Another patient, Leonard,
exhibits brain activity when his name is spoken during an EEG. Sayer
tries to stimulate these patients, to prove that they comprehend what's
happening to them, and has mixed results.
Dr. Sayer finds out that a drug, L-dopa, has made improvements in
the lives of Parkinson's patients, and he gets permission to try it on a
patient. He chooses Leonard (Robert DeNiro), and Leonard, gradually,
comes out of a thirty year sleep.
The relationship between Leonard and Sayer is remarkable. Sayer
is a very caring man, but he's painfully shy and inhibited. Leonard has
been forced inward by neurological damage, but he's determined to do
whatever he can, to experience everything he's missed. Sayer helps
Leonard cope with the missing years, and Leonard helps Sayer learn as
much as he can about the drug.
The most unbelievable part of the movie was the mass drug-testing
of the entire catatonic ward. Maybe that's the way it "really"
happened, but the ward staff was incredibly stretched caring "just" for
catatonics. They were hopelessly overworked once fifteen
neurologically-damaged yet awake people populated their ward. These
scenes have the feel of Cocoon, and were out-of-place with the rest of
the movie.
There are many wonderful performances in this movie. The actress
who played Leonard's devoted mother gave co-dependency a whole new
meaning. She's not evil, and she's happy that Leonard is better, but
she has trouble coping with a fifty-year-old adolescent. Julie Kavner
did a nice turn as Sayer's supportive nurse, Elinor. And Alice Drummond
as the gentle, confused Lucy, was also quite good.
The performances of Williams and DeNiro are extraordinary, Williams
for the subtleness, and DeNiro for the range. When performers are
mismatched (Cruise and Hoffman in RAIN MAN and Redford and Streep in OUT
OF AFRICA spring instantly to mind), the movie suffers. But these
performers work perfectly together.
Penny Marshall is one of the most important directors of the day.
Even with a weak script (JUMPING JACK FLASH), she consistently gets good
performances from her performers, and all her movies have lovely details.
The homes of the characters in Marshall movies look like places where
people live. And her vision of New York isn't quite as grand as Woody
Allen's---again, it's a "lived in" place.
This movie is at least an 8, and maybe a 9. It's a superb film,
and I hope you all go see it.
Laurie Mann ** lmann@jjmhome.UUCP ** Laurie_Mann@m80.stratus.com
NeXT mail: lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.comjgp@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Pellmann) (01/22/91)
AWAKENINGS
A film review by Jim Pellmann
Copyright 1991 Jim Pellmann
Set in 1969, this is the story of a neurologist (Robin Williams)
who attempts to "awaken" a group of patients in a mental hospital who
have been in a catatonic state for 30 years or more due to having had
encephalitis when younger. The doctor believes that the new drug
L-Dopa, which is being used to treat Parkinson's disease patients might
help them as well.
Robert De Niro plays Leonard, the first patient to try the
treatment. Leonard becomes a fully functional person again and the
doctor expands the treatment to other patients. Their joy at becoming
"normal" again is short-lived when Leonard starts regressing to his
former state.
This movie plays fast and loose with your emotions, but is not
manipulative. It is based on a true story, but I don't know how much
(if any) has been altered to make for a better story. Although
basically a drama, there are many hilarious moments.
As Leonard, De Niro gives a highly effective performance along the
lines of Dustin Hoffman in RAIN MAN and Daniel Day Lewis in MY LEFT
FOOT, and he will no doubt be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. His joy
at getting his life back is as compelling as his rage when he realizes
he is losing it again.
As Robin Williams learns to tone down his manic comedic style, he
is becoming a better and better actor. I think this is probably his
best work since THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP.
Julie Kavner is the sympathetic nurse who believes in the doctor
and becomes his biggest supporter among the otherwise doubting staff at
the hospital. There are lots of other well-known character actors
playing smaller roles too.
Director Penny Marshall (who also did BIG) demonstrates that she
can do drama every bit as well as comedy. Could be the first female
Best Director Oscar nominee.
Highly recommended, but bring a Kleenex or two.
--
Jim Pellmann (jpellmann@rational.com)