Some movies leave a lasting impression on you thanks to one memorable scene.
In “Awakenings,” the 1990 Robin Williams-Robert De Niro acting tour de force, that scene is when Williams, playing the Bronx neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer, throws tennis balls to wheelchair-bound patients of a hospital housing victims of the encephalitis epidemic. Mute and barely able to move, these patients instinctively react to catch the balls, inspiring Dr. Sayer to believe these patients had sparks of life inside their incapacitated bodies.
Now that I’ve seen “Awakenings” for the third time, it’s the kind of film that stays with you beyond just a critical scene I remembered from my first viewing. It’s a poignant, powerful and endearing film you can’t help but adore. But you have to act fast to catch it before it leaves Netflix’s streaming library on July 1.
The heart of 'Awakenings'
Directed by Penny Marshal (best known for “Big” and “A League of Their Own”), the film riffs off the real-life work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a trailblazing doctor who wrote the book “Awakenings” about his clinical research into helping encephalitis sufferers who were frozen in various stances, their nurses seeing them more as plants to water and feed than humans, as one stand-out quote tells us.
Dr. Sayer seeks to crack the block of ice caging these patients, and later discovers the drug L-DOPA to administer to these patients and help them find their true self, as if they were waking up from a decades-long dream.
The patients' story is focused on Leonard (De Niro), and his frozen position gradually eases into an active and charming man who recognizes the beauty of living life, even flirting with a female staffer for the first time.
It’s hard to forget the heart-breaking scene where he is so desperate to go for a walk on his own, he tries to leave the hospital and is restrained by security guards, his tears coursing down onto the floor.
The power of performance
De Niro’s acting is entrancing to watch, such as how his eyes “speak” to Sayer during his mute state, and the passion brimming in him once the new drug gives him a voice to express his deep frustration with not being allowed to roam free on his own.
I will unequivocally state that De Niro got robbed of an Academy Award in 1992 after Jeremy Irons won for "Reversal of Fortune."
Williams sheds his manic vaudevillian personality for a toned-down performance unlike anything he had taken on then. Fresh off his charged role in “Dead Poets Society,” Williams invokes a curious intelligence that he must’ve seen in Dr. Sacks when he shadowed him prior to playing a version of him for “Awakenings.”
He wants to do good so badly, he’s open to trying anything, even opting for an experimental drug known to elevate the mind and body movement of Parkinson’s sufferers.
As much as his patients “wake up” thanks to the drugs, so too does Dr. Sayer when he shifts his research focus from insects to people after he takes on the job at the hospital, and Williams doesn’t overplay his hand here. He lets the character gradually see the humanity in patients who have been left to wither and die. A single guy who prefers playing piano solo to getting a coffee with colleagues, Sayer also reflects on what he finds personally fulfilling beyond the satisfaction of drug experiments gone right.
The lasting legacy of Robin Williams
In “Awakenings,” we are treated to a Williams performance that surpasses the “serious” roles we have seen other comedians take when they’re done with slapstick and goofy faces.
When we think about Williams and his suicide in 2014, a wave of sadness may wash over us as we wonder what could’ve been. But we should be overjoyed to still have available to us the work of an actor who gave us so many hilarious and inspiring films, and whose own research into playing Dr. Sayer offers a peek into his unique approach to entertaining us.
When he was speaking to people with Tourette’s to prep for his role as Sayer, who also worked with patients with various neurological disorders, Williams said in the documentary "Come Inside My Mind": “Here’s a disease that basically makes you do, physically, things you have no control over. Along with it comes this incredible mental exhilaration that you think faster than most people.”
Faster than most people could describe the exhilarating stage performances we saw in Williams during his stand-up shows, or in interviews with Letterman or Leno. But when he slows down in a role like Dr. Sayer in “Awakenings,” we glimpse a side of the legendary actor we don’t often see, and we treasure how he was able to give us a nuanced portrayal of a doctor who wanted to turn up the dial on the life still lit within the chests of patients who had been cast away by society.
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