Awakenings

The Awakenings isn’t a newly released movie but its one of my favorites. Robin Williams plays a doctor called Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Dr. Sayer needed a job so he found one at the Bronx psychiatric hospital in 1969. When he was in medical school he said he had only worked on earthworms so he was nervous to work with people especially catatonic people. One day Dr. Sayer received a new patient and she had no response like the others but she had reflexes. He would drop her glasses and she will catch them. Dr. Sayer didn’t want to give up on the patients so he did research and all of the catatonic patients have one thing in common, it was they all had an infection and it attacked their brain. Their brain swelled up creating them catatonic. No one found out how they got it and he was the one who figured it out. He wanted to help them all but he needed to test a drug on only one patients named Leonard Lowe, played by Robert De Niro. Dr. Sayer gave Leonard a small dosage of the drug and he was able to swallow food and water. The doctor gave him a very high dosage of the drug and the next morning Leonard wasn’t in his bed. The drug worked and he was able to walk feed him self talk, everything. His boss was surprised so he let him give the drug to all the patients. Unfortunately Leonard began getting side affects, and wasn’t getting any better. Dr. Sayer couldn’t give another dosage of the drug because its dangerous. Leonard went back to being frozen and Dr. Sayer couldn’t believe he was able to give all the patients their life back and then take it away. This movie is a tear dropper. It made me feel so grateful for not being frozen or seeing anyone I care for in that position. There are a lot of funny parts also. This movie is very moving and I’m sure you would want to tell your friends about it. To watch the trailer click here. Awakenings