Awakenings

One of the rare film adaptations of works by Oliver Sacks, the legendary English-American neurologist and neuropsychologist and the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and many other books. Awakenings, a book published in 1972, is based on real events: working in Brox hospital in the early years of his career, Sacks came along a group of comatose patients with similar symptoms which turned out to be consequences of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. By utilising a new drug, the young doctor achieved the wondrous "resurrection": just like the legendary Rip Van Winkle, the patients woke up and regained conscious after decades of oblivion. 

Penny Marshall's film focuses on one of these patients, played by Robert De Niro, then on the peak of his acting career. The shy doctor Oliver Sacks was played by Robin Williams who himself would suffer from a serious neurological disease in his later years. Just like the book, the film which was nominated for several Academy Awards is not just the story of a fascinating medical experiment as it gives the audience a pause for thought about whether our ideas of capability, consciousness, and the concept of human in general are really that relevant.  

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