Awakenings

Awakenings is a rare little goodwill that may slip many viewers' radar even though it stars two of the best actors of all time - Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Based on a true story, we follow one Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), a shy and reserved doctor with a heart of gold as he's placed in a mental health institution to work with severely challenged patients. While he isn't comfortable at first, we push forth in his miraculous journey of curing a peculiar disease with methods unheard of.

Dr. Malcolm notices a pattern with several catatonic patients who are able to respond but completely void of any sort of movement. When dug deeper into the reports, he finds a common trait shared among all of them, which leads to the discovery of the cause we now know as the Encephalitis outbreak. In other words, to describe this disease on an emotional stand, the patients have lost their will to live and operate. They desperately need to borrow the will of another entity, living or otherwise. And this core principle is exactly how Dr. Malcolm achieves an unexpected miracle, and this is where Robert De Niro's character comes in!

Robert De Niro plays Leonard, a patient suffering from similar condition and the primary test subject of success for Dr. Malcolm. We follow this character from when he was a smart, outgoing kid to later discovering he has problem writing before completely withdrawing himself from society and friends. It's a pretty heartbreaking sight, and to see him completely recovered albeit a brief period of time is extremely heartwarming! He even meets a girl visitor whom he finds a liking for. Everything works fine, all similar patients experience the same improvement and Dr. Malcolm's medicine experiment receives official funding.

Mighty unfortunately, this doesn't last. Increased dosage doesn't have an effect anymore as it causes more ticks than cure, before eventually turning all the patients back to the state they were at the start of the story. To see Leonard having his moments of ticks in front of the girl he likes before they share a dance can puncture you heart! It's tragic and incredibly sad, but our shy and reserved Dr. Malcolm learns an important lesson. That is to live. That is not take life for granted. The effectiveness of the message may not be at a 100, but we got the message regardless. It even made us forgive some of the poor ADRs at the beginning of the picture.