A.I.D.S Amnesia Amputee Autism Blind Cancer Deaf Disfigurement Dwarf General Learning Difficulty Limb Mental Polio Stuttering Recommended by Title Recommended by Disability 
| Mental Illness: Major Films 
| Title | Awakenings (1990) | | Alternative/Original Title | | | Disability | Mental vegative state | | Country | USA | | Length | 121 | | Genre | Drama | | Rating | 4 | | Director | Penny Marshall
| | Cast | Robert De Niro Robin Williams Julie Kavner Ruth Nelson John Heard
| | Notes | A film derived from the experiences of Dr. Oliver Sacks. A doctor works in the chronic care ward of a Bronx hospital (c.1969). This could be the usual drama of the new doctor being right while everyone else is wrong as he seeks to 'revive' the patients in a vegetative state. But this film avoids sentimentality and the acting of Williams and De Niro make this a thought provoking film rather than one about miraculous cures. The patients have something called encephalitis lethargic. The drug Sacks uses is L-Dopa. Personally I found the film boring and tedious. It might have been better without the overacting of De Niro. This kind of film is more acceptable without big-name actors. The film concentrates on the recovery of just one patient and like many dramas about mental recovery the rest of the patients are just wallpaper. Though we do see that some patients have regressed. It seems to me that some critics often tend to over praise films which they consider well-meaning and involve subjects such a disability.
|
 Back to Home Page
|
