The 1990 film Awakenings is a dramatization of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ 1973 memoir of the same name – and the true story behind the semi-fictional Dr. In 1990, viewers were treated to a dramatic story starring Robin Williams (who, even in a role more serious, added a touch of his particular sense of humor) and Robert De Niro. The pair play doctor and patient in a story that is equal parts moving and moving. Unlike Robin Williams’ other medical drama, the historically inaccurate Patch Adams, Awakenings uses his true story to enhance his own semi-fictional narrative.
Directed by Penny Marshall, Awakenings is a reinterpretation of the innovative work carried out by Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of Awakenings book. While it certainly makes big changes, including the main characters involved, the important aspects, and the powerful elements of the Awakenings true stories are captured. This helped to make Awakenings a huge success, earning more than US$52 million (Mojo Box Office) and being nominated for three Oscars, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Robert De Niro) and Best Film. Additionally, there are many fascinating facts about the true history of Awakenings and how they relate to the film.
The inspiration for awakening, Dr. Sayer explained
Robin Williams’ character is based on Dr. Oliver Sacks
Awakenings follows semi-fictional neurologist Malcolm Sayer (played by Robin Williams), who, in 1969, while working at a hospital in the Bronx, began extensive research into catatonic patients who survived the encephalitis lethargica epidemic of 1917-1928. Sayer learns of a new medication that helps patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and believes it may be useful in catatonic patients.
He conducts a test with patient Leonard Lowe (played by Robert De Niro), who completely “awakens” and begins to show great improvements, but the experiments soon run into some obstacles that threaten the quality of life of the patients who were just beginning. to deal with. with a new life in a new time. As detailed in Sacks’ memoir, the drug and experiments shown in the film are indeed real, despite Awakenings being a fictional story.
Dr. Sayer is based on Dr. Sayer. a British neurologist, naturalist, historian and writer, author of several best-selling books reporting case studies of people with neurological disorders, including himself. Sacks suffered from prosopagnosia, also known as “face blindness,” a cognitive disorder of facial perception that affects the ability to recognize familiar faces, including his own.
This disorder was the basis for his book The man who mistook his wife for a hatpublished in 1985. More than a decade earlier, he wrote a book about the Awakenings true story, telling the life stories of the victims of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic of the 1920s.
Also known as sleeping sickness, this disease attacks the brain and leaves victims in a state of “condition of a statue, speechless and motionless”, similar to locked-in syndrome. Sacks described the patients as “aware and conscious – but not fully awake,”and began studying and helping them at Beth Abraham Hospital in the 1960s. Awakenings The cast brought Oliver Sack’s work with sleeping sickness to life, especially Williams as Dr. Sayer, and it’s a Robin Williams medical film that avoids the saccharine qualities of Patch Adams.
True Awakening Story: The Real Doctor Sacks and His Drug Experiments
The real experiments that inspired the movie Awakened explained
The drug that Sacks began using on catatonic patients was L-DOPA, also known as levodopa, an amino acid precursor to the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline). L-DOPA is used to treat Parkinson’s disease, but Sacks saw its potential in treating other diseases. According to an article by AP News in 1991, De Niro’s character, Leonard Lowe, is a real person based on a real Sacks patient, described as “an exceptionally well-read man, quoting philosophers freely and writing insightful book reviews.”
Leonard, like many other patients, initially had a positive reaction to the drug and woke up completely, but just like in the film version of AwakeningsLeonard began to become paranoid and developed severe tics, eventually regressing to his previous catatonic state and passing away in 1981.
Book of Awakening vs. Awakening Movie: What They Changed
There are many differences between Awakenings book and film. Most notably, Oliver Sacks does not appear in the film, with the character Dr. Malcolm Sayer played by Robin Williams replacing him. This was a deliberate decision to give the writers artistic license for dramatic scenes and friction that did not occur in real life (including flirting with a nurse, which the real Oliver Sacks never did, as he was homosexual).
Patients in Awakenings they also had the more violent or sexually aggressive elements of their symptoms alleviated. De Niro’s character is perhaps the closest to his literary counterpart, but even Lowe has some moments in Awakenings film that does not appear in the book. Again, these are flirtatious moments that are clearly added to inject some Hollywood drama and keep the audience engaged.
The Rhythm of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ Memoirs Awakenings It’s different in the film, but it works for the heartfelt story that’s enhanced by Williams and one of the many powerful roles De Niro has transformed himself to play. Crucially, the key moment when the patients wake up occurs a few weeks into the book, and they don’t all wake up at once.
What Awakenings movie didn’t change much was the impact of the debilitating illnesses Dr. Sacks/Dr. Sayer treated. After all, illnesses like sleeping sickness are at the heart of Awakening’ true story and the work that Dr. Sacks did, so it makes sense that the harrowing impact of catatonic conditions would be the driving element Awakenings less tampered with when it was brought to the big screen.
Robin Williams and Oliver Sacks became lifelong friends
Playing a fictional version of Dr. Sacks was Robin William’s favorite role
Of course, Awakenings made several changes to the stories of Sacks’ patients, but as he had Sacks as technical advisor,the team made sure it stayed true to the essence of the book and delivered a true yet devastating portrait of encephalitis lethargica and its effects. The extraordinary character actor and improv performer Robin Williams and Oliver Sacks were close friends when they both sadly passed away, meeting on the set of Awakenings. Williams spent a lot of time with Sacks to ensure his character, Dr. Sayer, didn’t stray too far from the Awakenings true story.
The late Williams even cited portraying Sacks/Dr. Sayer as his favorite role in a Reddit AMAsaying,
“I think playing Oliver Sacks in Awakenings was a gift because I got to know him and explore the human brain from the inside out. Because Oliver writes about human behavior in a subjective way and that for me was the beginning of a fascination with human behavior.“
Likewise, in conversation with Charlie Rose, Williams spoke about Sacks as one of the great teachers in his life, long after the film ended.
The fact that Dr. Sayer in Awakenings replaces the real Dr. Sacks is not importantas countless inaccurate biographies about specific individuals look nothing like them. However, the closeness between Williams and Sacks, as well as the great admiration Williams clearly had for the man, made this film feel more authentic than some of those more blatant biopics. It’s easy to feel the personal connection through Williams’ relationship in awakenings, even though he’s not technically playing Oliver Sacks.
How accurate are awakenings to real history
The 1990 film is a fascinating mix of realism and fiction
Analyzing the accuracy of Awakenings creates a lot of questions when it comes to the importance of realism in biopics. It also serves as a key point in the debate between whether emotional truth or cold, hard facts are more significant when adapting a true story into a film. From the beginning, it was obvious that Awakenings it would never be 100% accurate due to one important fact – Robin Williams was playing Malcolm Sayer, not Oliver Sacks.
If Awakenings If I had always intended to tell a story that was unflinchingly faithful to real-life events, I would never have needed the creative wiggle room that comes with changing the central character from a real person to a fictional person.
Malcolm Sayer is heavily based on Oliver Sacks, and Robin Williams spent a lot of time with his eventual friend to ensure his fictionalized version of the groundbreaking doctor captured the essence of who he was. However, if Awakenings If I had always intended to tell a story that was unflinchingly faithful to real-life events, I would never have needed the creative wiggle room that came with changing the central character from a real person to a fictional person.
This is where Awakenings it makes for an interesting conversation, though. Because while there have been some changes to specific times, events, and people, the real question is always whether it really mattered. By playing Malcolm Sayer, Robin Williams managed to convey the importance, struggles and obstacles faced by the real Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Robin Williams, alongside director Penny Marshall and screenwriter Steve Zaillian, managed to tell a story that prioritized being faithful to Dr. Oliver Sacks as a person, rather than necessarily recreating a step-by-step reenactment of everything that happened during his research. Despite being accurately liberal in many respects, Awakenings it still had a feeling of authenticity – which many biopics that stick more closely to the true stories of their subjects lack.