Awakenings Movie Essay

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Name:Mikaella Janice Ignalig Course and Section Movie Critique of “Awakenings” B.S PHARMACY 1-1 The Writer: Oliver Sucks Name of the Professor Director: Penny Marshall Ms. Peggy Ann Orbe This movie an epidemic of a rare disease occurred, springing up, as virus diseases sometimes do, seemingly out of nowhere. It spread over Europe and then to other parts of the world and affected some five million people. The onset of the disease was sudden and took different forms. Some people developed acute restlessness or insomnia or dementia. Others fell into a trance-like sleep or coma. These different forms were recognized and identified by the physician Constantin von Economo as one disease, which he called encephalitis lethargica, …show more content…

These awakenings opened his eyes to the tragedy: the passage of time that not all of the patients could admit to having lost. The dichotomy between the benefits and adverse side effects, however evident they seem, is a difficult area in the doctor-patient relationship. Both must accept the reality of the situation. The film is indeed a masterful depiction of medical ethics and of the value of existence. The mother of leonard and the doctor of leonard that is doctor sayer. Only Doctor sayer did a good job and her mother also it is because they do something to cure the disease. I like the part of the movie when leonard is already fine and he is happy to know that he knows it already how to walk and to eat not only leonard most especially dr.sayer and his mother. There is one scene I will always remember from Awakenings. It's when Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) sits on a bench at the zoo watching a large cat pace behind the bars, staring out at him but unable, of course, to leave its confinement. All it does is pace. And in a voiceover we can hear a Rilke poem, "The Panther," ("his gaze has been so worn by the procession...") And Sayer begins to understand what is going on in the minds of his catatonic patients; though their bodies are

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