Awakenings was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale, and optioned it a few years later. Released on December 12, 1990, the film was a critical and commercial success, earning $108.7 million on a $29 million budget. It was nominated for three Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Actor for De Niro, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Plot
In 1969, Dr. Malcolm Sayer is a dedicated and caring physician at a local hospital in the Bronx borough of New York City. After working extensively with the catatonic patients who survived the 1919–1930 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, Sayer discovers that certain stimuli will reach beyond the patients' respective catatonic states; actions, such as catching a ball, hearing familiar music, being called by their name, and enjoying human touch, all have unique effects on particular patients and offer a glimpse into their worlds. Patient Leonard Lowe seems to remain unmoved, but Sayer learns that Leonard is able to communicate with him by using a Ouija board.
After attending a lecture at a conference on the drug L-DOPA and its success for patients with Parkinson's disease, Sayer believes that the drug may offer a breakthrough for his own group of patients. A trial run with Leonard yields astounding results; Leonard completely "awakens" from his catatonic state. This success inspires Sayer to ask for funding from donors, so that all the catatonic patients can receive the L-DOPA medication and gain "awakenings" to reality and the present.
Meanwhile, Leonard is adjusting to his new life, and becomes romantically interested in Paula, the daughter of another hospital patient. Leonard begins to chafe at the restrictions placed on him as a patient of the hospital, desiring the freedom to come and go as he pleases. He stirs up a revolt by arguing his case to Sayer and the hospital administration. As Leonard becomes more agitated, Sayer notices that a number of facial and body tics begin to manifest, which Leonard has difficulty controlling.
Although Sayer and the hospital staff are thrilled by the success of L-DOPA with this group of patients, they soon learn that it is a temporary result. As the first to "awaken", Leonard is also the first to demonstrate the limited duration of this period of "awakening". Leonard's tics gradually grow more prominent, and he starts to shuffle as he walks. All the patients are forced to witness what will eventually happen to them. Leonard soon begins to have full body spasms and can hardly move. He tolerates the pain, and asks Sayer to film him, with the hope that he would someday contribute to research that may help others. Leonard acknowledges what is happening to him, and has a last lunch with Paula, at which he tells her that he cannot see her anymore. When he is about to leave, Paula dances with him. For this short period of time, his spasms disappear. Leonard and Sayer reconcile their differences, but Leonard soon returns to his catatonic state. The other patients' fears are similarly realized, as each eventually returns to catatonia, no matter how much their L-DOPA dosages are increased.
Sayer tells a group of hospital grant donors that, although the "awakening" did not last, another kind — one of learning to appreciate and live life — occurred. For example, he overcomes his painful shyness and asks Nurse Eleanor Costello to go out for coffee, many months after he had declined a similar invitation from her. The nurses treat the catatonic patients with more respect and care, and Paula visits Leonard. Sayer and Leonard continue to communicate with the Ouija board.
On September 15, 1989, Liz Smith reported that those being considered for the role of Leonard Lowe's mother were Kaye Ballard, Shelley Winters and Anne Jackson;[2] not quite three weeks later, Newsday named Nancy Marchand as the leading contender.[3] In January 1990 — more than three quarters of the way through the film's four-month shooting schedule[4][5][6] — the matter was seemingly resolved, when the February 1990 issue of Premiere magazine published a widely cited story, belatedly informing fans that, not only had Winters gotten the role, she had been targeted at De Niro's request, and had been cast by displaying her Oscar awards (for the benefit of veteran casting director, Bonnie Timmermann).[a]
Ms. Winters arrived, sat down across from the casting director and did, well, nothing. After a moment of silence, she reached into her satchel and pulled out an Oscar, which she placed on the desk. After another moment, she reached in and pulled out another, placing it on the desk beside the first.[b] Finally she said: "Some people think I can act. Do you still want me to read for this part?" "No, Miss Winters," came the reply. She got the part.[14]
Despite Liz Smith's, Newsday's and Premiere's seemingly definitive reports (which, minus any mention of the specific film being discussed, would be periodically reiterated and ultimately embellished in subsequent years),[15][16] the film was released in December 1990, featuring neither Winters (whose early dismissal evidently resulted from continuing attempts to pull rank on director Penny Marshall)[17][18] nor any of the other previously publicized candidates (nor at least two others, Jo Van Fleet and Teresa Wright, identified in subsequent accounts),[19][20] but rather the then-85-year-old Group Theater alumnus, Ruth Nelson, giving a well-received performance in what would be her final feature film.[21][19] "As Leonard's mother," wrote The Wall Street Journal critic, Julie Salamon, "Nelson achieves a wrenching beauty that stands out even among these exceptional actors doing exceptional things."[22] In her 2012 memoir, Penny Marshall recalled:
Ruth was a great lady. She was a New York stage actress in the 1930s who transitioned to movies but was blacklisted in the 1950s when her second husband was among those Senator Joseph McCarthy labeled a Communist. She was victimized by association and didn't work for three decades. When I met her, she was eighty-four and had battled a brain tumor and also had arthritis. I stared at her slender arms and gnarled hands. It looked like she had pushed her kid's arms and legs down for years. I liked her. I couldn't get her insured, but I didn't care. Neither did she. She wanted to do it. To me, that’s what the movie was about.[23]
Awakenings was released theatrically on December 12, 1990, with an opening weekend gross of $417,076,[26] opening in second place, behind Home Alone's ninth weekend, with $8,306,532.[27] It went on to gross $52.1 million in the United States and Canada,[26] and $56.6 million internationally,[28] for a worldwide total of $108.7 million.
Critical response
Awakenings received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 38 film critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.6/10. Its consensus states: "Elevated by some of Robin Williams'[s] finest non-comedic work and a strong performance from Robert De Niro, Awakenings skirts the edges of melodrama, then soars above it."[29]Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score from reviews of mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 18 reviews.[30] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A" on scale of A+ to F.[31]
After seeing Awakenings, I read it, to know more about what happened in that Bronx hospital. What both the movie and the book convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they reexperienced what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that "you" are alive.[32]
There's a raw, subversive element in De Niro's performance: He doesn't shrink from letting Leonard seem grotesque. Yet Awakenings, unlike the infinitely superior Rain Man, isn't really built around the quirkiness of its lead character. The movie views Leonard piously; it turns him into an icon of feeling. And so even if you're held (as I was) by the acting, you may find yourself fighting the film's design.[33]
Oliver Sacks, the author of the memoir on which the film is based, "was pleased with a great deal of [the film]", explaining,
I think in an uncanny way, De Niro did somehow feel his way into being Parkinsonian. So much so that sometimes when we were having dinner afterwards I would see his foot curl or he would be leaning to one side, as if he couldn't seem to get out of it. I think it was uncanny the way things were incorporated. At other levels I think things were sort of sentimentalized and simplified somewhat.[34]
Desson Howe of The Washington Post said that the film's tragic aspects did not live up to the strength in its humor, saying,
When nurse Julie Kavner (another former TV being) delivers the main Message (life, she tells Williams, is "given and taken away from all of us"), it doesn't sound like the climactic point of a great movie. It sounds more like a line from one of the more sensitive episodes of Laverne and Shirley.[35]
^Neither as printed in the following 1990 Premiere excerpt nor as recounted by Winters herself six years later does this anecdote identify by name the casting director in question. As regards gender, however (and notwithstanding subsequent versions to the contrary), Winters's own account clearly cites a "casting lady",[7] and Bonnie Timmerman is indeed the credited casting director on the finished film.[8]
^At this point, a red flag regarding this story's accuracy should have been raised by any truly well-versed Winters fan, given the fact that roughly fifteen years earlier (as was widely reported, both at the time and subsequently), she had famously donated the first of her two Oscars to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.[9][10][11][12][13] Indeed, Winters' own version of events, as recounted to Tom Snyder in 1996, while failing to inform viewers that she did not in fact land the role in question, is accurate as regards both number of Oscars involved and gender—i.e. female—of both the film's unnamed "casting lady" and director Penny Marshall, towards whom, at least in retrospect, Winters displays a markedly greater degree of deference: "If Penny Marshall, who was the director, was going to ask me to read, that was okay with me."[7]
^Fleming, Michael; Freifeld, Karen; Stasi, Linda (October 4, 1989). "Inside New York: Big Wigs at Lunch". Newsday (New York). p. 12. Retrieved March 9, 2022.
^"New Film Starts". Variety. October 18, 1989. p. 24. ProQuest1286179696. Awakenings (Col) 10/11/89.
^"Film Production (Films Currently in Production)". The Hollywood Reporter. December 5, 1989. p. 23. ProQuest2610466570. Shooting in New York (Start October 16).
^"Awakenings. USA, 1990". Monthly Film Bulletin. March 1, 1991. p. 72. ProQuest1305840679. Cert—12. dist—Columbia TriStar. p.c.—Columbia. exec. p—Penny Marshall, Anne Schmidt, Elliot Abbott. p—Walter F. Parkes, Lawrence Lasker. assoc. p—Amy Lemisch. p. office co-ordinator—Harriette Kanew. unit p. manager—Timothy M. Bourne. location manager—Richard Baratta. casting—Bonnie Timmermann. (addit.) Todd M. Thaler, Judie Fixler.
^Reuter (January 11, 1975). "Winters' Oscar Going to Anne Frank Museum". The Globe and Mail. p. 34. ProQuest1239438574. Miss Winters is in London to make a comedy, Heaven Save Us From Our Friends, opposite Lee J. Cobb. She surprised the cast of the picture by turning up with the little statuette in her luggage. [...] This weekend the unit moves to Bruges, in Belgium, for more shooting and Miss Winters plans to go to Amsterdam to hand over the coveted trophy. A spokesman for Miss Winters said: 'She plans to do this very quietly. She doesn't want people to think she is cashing in on such a tragic story for publicity for herself.
^United Press International (January 16, 1975). "Actress Gives Oscar to Museum". San Bernardino Sun. p. A-3. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
^Biederman, Danny (May 1979). "'Oscarisms' Through the Years". American Cinematographer. p. 493. ProQuest2296239796. Shelley Winters, Best Supporting Actress winner for THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK in 1960[sic], would 16 years later donate her Oscar to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsrerdam—the actual house where the thirteen-year-old Anne, in 1942, wrote her journal. At first, the Museum turned down the trophy because they couldn't decide what to do with it. Eventually they changed their mind and accepted the statuette during a ceremony that was attended by Anne Frank's father, Otto.
^McCombs, Don; Worth, Fred L. (1983). World War II Super Facts. New York: Warner Books. pp. 572–573.
Conconi, Chuck (January 25, 1990). "Personalities". The Washington Post. p. B3. ProQuest140131176. The actress arrived and sat down across from the casting director. After a moment of silence, she reached into her satchel and pulled out an Oscar, which she placed on the desk. Then she reached in and pulled out another, placing it next to the first. Finally she said, 'Some people think I can act. Do you still want me to read for this part?' 'No, Miss Winters,' came the reply. She got the part.
Staff and Wire Reports (January 26, 1990). "People: Eastwood Recalls Joy of Filming Series". The St. Petersburg Times. p. 3A. ProQuest262710756. The actress arrived and sat down across from the casting director. After a moment of silence, she reached into her satchel and pulled out an Oscar, which she placed on the desk. Then she reached in and pulled out another, placing it next to the first. Finally she said, 'Some people think I can act. Do you still want me to read for this part?' 'No, Miss Winters,' came the reply. She got the part.
^Ebert, Roger (May 12, 1995). "'Sharks' Takes Sardonic Swipe at Hollywood". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 37. Retrieved—via RogerEbert.com. "When we first meet [Guy], he's having lunch with a table full of other ambitious young would-be executives, at Musso and Frank's. He's telling an anecdote about how Shelley Winters was asked to audition for a producer once, and simply pulled her Oscars out of her handbag and lined them up on his desk. It would be a great story, if the others had heard of Shelley Winters (one of them finally remembers her from 'The Poseidon Adventure'). Retrieved March 6, 2022. See also:
^Stone, Judy (December 20, 1990). "De Niro Shines in "Awakenings'". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. 4. ProQuest302504282. For an all-too-brief time, he's free of the deeply symbiotic relationship with his too-devoted mother (Ruth Nelson, so splendidly shaken by his unexpected 'recovery'). See also:
Honeycutt, Kirk (December 13, 1990). "De Niro Shines in "Awakenings'". The Hollywood Reporter. pp. 9, 18. ProQuest2610464859. The film's most tough-minded performance belongs to Ruth Nelson as Leonard's tenacious, white-haired mother. Having tended him for decades, she is overwhelmed by his recovery, yet better prepared to face its consequences than the doctors.
Svitil, Torene (December 21, 1990). "Reviews: Awakenings". Screen International. p. 14. ProQuest1014656550. Williams and Julie Kavner (who plays his nurse) are sympathetic and Ruth Nelson is flawless as his mother.
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