Awakeningsdirected By Penny Marshall: Film Analysis

I. Introduction Awakenings was directed by Penny Marshall and It was written by Oliver Sacks and Steven Zaillan. The main Character was Robin Williams as Dr.Malcolm Sayer. In the movie awakenings, Dr.Malcolm Sayer discover a positive effects of the drug L-dopa to the catatonic patients who survived the disease called Encephalitis lethargica, According to (NORD 07) ‘Encephalitis lethargica is a disease characterized by high fever, headache, double vision, delayed physical and mental response, and lethargy. In acute cases, patients may enter coma. Patients may also experience abnormal eye movements, upper body weakness, muscular pains, tremors, neck rigidity, and behavioral changes including psychosis.

Love is a powerful emotion that every human being has experience at least once in their life. There are numerous connotations that refer to this emotion, but there is only one kind of love that can make a person change completely in unexpected ways. It is the kind of love that consumes the soul and everything within. Mixed with excitement, adventure, heartbreak, happiness and joy; it is a big ball of feelings, all concentrated in one simple, yet extremely complicated necessity to have, protect, please and give all of oneself to that one person. In certain occasions, love can grow very intense and, consequently,

I choose some take away messages from different sections throughout the film. I will use the information from the video and apply it to my everyday tasks in my future classroom. Starting from the beginning of the film with the “Difficult Times to Processing” section it allows me to understand students with learning disabilities have twice as much to process, question and answer so they need more time. The “Risk Taking” section taught me how students with learning disabilities like reassurance and do not like surprises. If I have a student with a

Connections are absolutely essential in everyday life. People learn by making connections with what they are presented with, to their previous knowledge. When people can relate to another and empathize with each other, they learn to be compassionate. After reading “Abitibi Canyon” by Joseph Boyden, I wondered how this story was similar to my life and to others.

The movie Awakenings is a true story about a neurologist played by Robin Williams, at a hospital in the Bronx, who discovers a drug L-Dopa in which helps temporarily with unresponsive patients. Leonard Lowe who is played by Robert Deniro and the other patients are given this new age drug and are forced to adapt to the world around them that has been changing ever since they began to be catatonic.

developing a rapport with ones patients and that a little compassion and understanding can mean the world to a

The movie Field of Dreams came out in 1989 and was directed by Phil Alden Robinson and story written by W.P. Kinsella. The movie is about a guy named Ray Kinsella, and he lives in Iowa with his wife Annie and daughter Karin, with their yard being a farm to produce crops to make money. One day when Ray was out on the farm, he heard a voice saying “If you build it, he will come”. He went inside to tell Annie, but they didn’t know what it meant. A few days later, he still kept hearing the voice say “If you build it he will come”, and they imagined a baseball field in the middle of his farm and crops and saw Shoeless Joe Jackson. Ray then thought that if he builds a baseball field, Shoeless Joe Jackson might come back to play again.

In Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, she writes about a woman’s desire to find and live fully within her true self during the 1890s in Louisiana. The woman, Edna Pontellier, is trying to find herself in the masculine society of Louisiana, leading her to cause friction with friends, family and the Creole society. Edna begins to feel a change; she begins to feel like a whole person with wants, interests and desires. She learns that she is not comfortable with being a wife and mother. The imagery of the parrot in the cage in Chopin’s novel is being compared to Edna because it represents Edna’s unspoken feelings and imprisonment. The sense of unspoken feelings and imprisonment of Edna causes her to put her own needs before her family. As Edna finds herself trying to satisfy the Creole society, she begins to feel isolated and confused. Through Edna’s trace of freedom, she begins to undergo a transformation of self, slowly straying away from society, and taking control over her own actions and beliefs. Through obstacles to Edna’s freedom, she learns that she does have control of her own body. The symbolism of the birds and the sea is used to symbolize Edna’s struggle for independence.

Mood: The mood throughout the story was sometimes constant. There were moments when the mood was sad and there were other moments that the patients had a good time.

It has been said that ignorance is bliss and if we do not know that something more exists, we do not yearn for it. It has also been said that the door to enlightenment and inner wisdom, once opened, can never be closed again. Many great philosophers and teachers have dealt with the idea of whether it is better to live a life of servitude and submission, or are we to pursue a life of personal happiness and emotional freedom.

The documentary we viewed in class is called Thirteenth and is a harrowing deconstruction of the United States current criminal justice system. This one hour and forty minute documentary directed by Ava Duvernay digs deep into the corruption, stagnation, and mismanagement of our countries prison and justice system. Showing how racial prejudice is still alive and well today by examining how we treat criminals in the U.S. This documentary was released in 2016 as a Netflix original and caused quite the uproar. As an indie documentary many people expected very little from Thirteenth, however they were unpleasantly shocked by this scathing dissection of criminality in America. It makes use of the voice of many experts to make a clear point, the

The movie Awakenings is directed by Penny Marshall in the year 1990. Given the title Awakenings, the movie was about the dream of a doctor named Dr. Malcolm Sayer portrayed by Robin Willliams, whose goal is to cure the survivors of the outbreak of Encephalitis Lethargica and was paralyzed by Parkinson’s disease for decades. Dr. Sayer treated them by a miracle drug: Levo-dopa that was able to revive them again. After these awakenings, the true problems unveil, between the benefits and the counter side effects of the drug and the patients that weren’t able to accept the reality in time they have missed. This is some of the different factors of the movie that contributed to inspire works Dr. Sayer throughout the movie, which is the purpose of this paper.

The theme of the movie is laughter is the best medicine because joy will always cure the soul. The movie started off with the main character Patch Adams admitting himself into a mental hospital. Being in the mental hospital he came upon a rude psychiatrist that didn’t care to help or listen to the patients. This made him realize he wanted to go to medical school and properly help, care and treat patients. Patch released himself from the Mental facility and went to Virginia Medical College. One part in the movie that makes you understand the theme is when Patch Adams dresses up as an angel which symbolizes spiritual figures. Patch Adams was determined to become a medical doctor once he started visiting patients in the Medical school clinical hours. This made him truly passionate about helping people. Patch Adams believed the medical staff did not appreciate the methods of healing patients as much as they should, they care about the money instead. He cheers the patients up by making light out of the idea of death. He dressed up as a clown for the children who had cancer, asked patients what they wanted to do before they pass away, and he tried to make their wishes come true.

The film Awakenings is an emotional film that tells the story of a doctor, named Dr. Malcolm Sayer played by Robin Williams, who starts work at a chronic hospital in the Bronx during the late 1960’s. As he examines patients at the hospital though he comes to observe a good many of them are experiencing the same symptoms of a being in a catatonic and unresponsive state yet still having the ability to react to certain stimuli. One patient in particular, named Leonard Lowe played by Robert De Niro, catches Sayer’s attention and he decides to administer a new drug known as L-Dopa in hopes of saving him from his coma-like state. The drugs works and soon all of the once statuesque patients are reanimated, but only for a short time, and sadly soon Leonard and the rest of his fellow patients regress to their original catatonic state. However, although this films proves to be deeply emotional with an extremely touching story many concepts that relate to psychology are also present within it as well. Some concepts present within the film Awakenings are that of the principle of ethics, the frustration-aggression theory, conformity, and also the idea of empathy-altruism.

In this paper, I will write about “Thelma and Louise” (1991) movie. I choose a last scene of the movie which the police came to arrest them in the Grand Canyon (from 122 to 125 minutes).