Critical Review On The Movie ' Awakenings '

The video, Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings, gives an influential look into the beginning of the civil rights movement. It shared many different events that helped bring about the movement and eventually caused that Black society would have the same or similar rights as the White’s. The main events that took placed happened in the southern states, particularly in Alabama. In the US blacks were segregated and were not allowed the same rights or privileges as the white race. They also were of the poorer class and that made it harder for them to have a voice in specific matters. However, it was very strict in the south and almost everything has either a black or white section. As time passed blacks began to show small acts of courage of standing up for themselves and demanding equality.

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin creates a protagonist that clearly demonstrates a feminist. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier seeks more from life than what she is living and starts to refuse the standards of the society she lives in. Edna has many moments of awakening resulting in creating a new person for herself. She starts to see the life of freedom and individuality she wants to live. The Awakening encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain freedom and choose individuality over conformity. Chopin creates a feminist story that shows a transformation from an obedient “mother-woman” to a woman who is willing to sacrifice her old life to become independent and make an identity for herself.

The time period of the 1880s that Kate Chopin lived in influenced her to write The Awakening, a very controversial book because of many new depictions of women introduced in the book. The Awakening is a book about a woman, Edna Pontellier. In the beginning, she is a happy woman with her husband and 2 kids vacationing at Grand Isle. While there, Edna realizes she is in love with Robert Lebrun and that she was just forced into an unloving/dissatisfying marriage with Mr. Pontellier. Robert however, leaves for Mexico. While there, Edna picks up a relationship with Alcee Arobin who helps her realize her sexual passions. Edna has a sexual awakening, and is determined to get independence and she eventually leaves Mr. Pontellier. She shows her independence and sexual passions through painting. Edna moves into a house of her own. Robert comes home and tells her he loves her. However, Edna can't handle all of the social "rules" and commits suicide before finishing her conversation with Robert. The book contained a lot of sexual passion shown by Edna, which is a new depiction of women in the 1880s. The new tone Kate Chopin wrote in was influenced by society and her life. The Awakening caused a lot of controversy due to this new tone.

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.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, is the story of a woman who is seeking freedom. Edna Pontellier feels confined in her role as mother and wife and finds freedom in her romantic interest, Robert Lebrun. Although she views Robert as her liberator, he is the ultimate cause of her demise. Edna sees Robert as an image of freedom, which brings her to rebel against her role in society. This pursuit of freedom, however, causes her death. Chopin uses many images to clarify the relationship between Robert and Edna and to show that Robert is the cause of both her freedom and her destruction.

As the novel progresses, Edna is able to escape from the hands of Leonce Pontellier, and she moves into a small house down the street in which she calls the pigeon house. The symbol of the bird is used here by saying she may be able to release herself from Leonce but she isn’t able to release herself from society, that she if forever trapped. In the end of the novel, before Edna’s tragedy, a bird with a broken wing crashes into the sea. This bird can be connected with the advice that Mademoiselle Reisz told Edna that she needed strong wings to soar. The connection for shadows Edna’s tragedy, and reveals her complete failure to find complete freedom and happiness.

The movie, Requiem for a Dream (Selby & Mansell, 2000) exposes the multiple faces of addiction. Addiction can change a person’s identity and therefore, impacts each person differently. This movie explores the life of four addicts who push the boundaries of their own lives leaving the viewer to wonder, how far will they go to use drugs? The focus of this paper is on what addiction looks like for the character, Harry Goldfarb.

Sacrifices can define one’s character; the definition can either be the highest dignity or the lowest degradation of the value of one’s life. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin implicitly conveys the sacrifice Edna Pontellier makes in the life which provides insight of her character and attributions to her “awakening.” She sacrificed her past of a lively and youthful life and compressed it to a domestic and reserved lifestyle of housewife picturesque. However, she meets multiple acquaintances who help her express her dreams and true identity. Mrs. Pontellier’s sacrifice established her awakening to be defiant and drift away from the societal role of an obedient mother, as well as, highlighting the difference between society’s expectations of

Throughout The Awakening, a novel by Kate Chopin, the main character, Edna Pontellier showed signs of a growing depression. There are certain events that hasten this, events which eventually lead her to suicide.

Something that really marked me during the documentary, Eye On the Prize : Awakenings, was the Emmett Till case that resulted in his death. While watching the documentary, I was shocked at seeing how mutilated the body of Emmett Till was when he was found dead by his own uncle. I also found very troubling when the authorities let the two men who murdered Emmett Till walk away without any consequences. It’s actually understandable why black people didn’t really rebel much in the south because of such trials like this that just make the criminals who walk free even though there is so much evidence gathered up against them. For example, in the book Black Like Me, there was also the Mack Parker case when a group of people walked into a jail, pulled

Dr. Malcolm Sayer is a dedicated and caring physician at a hospital in the Bronx. After working with the catatonic patients who survived many years, he discover a stimuli that can make a specific patient responsive, like hearing familiar music, catching a ball, and human touch can have an effect on specific patients to response again. Leonard Lowe, at first was the only one without a specific stimuli to make him responsive, then Sayer discovers that he can talk to him using an Ouija board. After the lecture about L-dopa he attended, Sayer believes that this may help his patients. He first tried it to Leonard and came to a successful result: Leonard was finally awaken from his disease, Leonard completely awakens from his catatonic state. This

In the movie, Awakenings, Dr. Sayer is a neurologist who begins studying the patients in his hospital that have survived the epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Because of the encephalitis lethargica, the patients have become catatonic and unresponsive. After much studying, Dr. Sayer sees that the patients are responsive to certain stimuli such as catching a ball or listening to music. Dr. Sayer decides to conduct an experiment where he gives his catatonic patients the drug L-Dopa, which is an agonist for the hormone dopamine, which is supposed to be made and released naturally in the human brain and controls behavior and cognition.   At first the drug works and his patients seem to awaken from their catatonic state.

The Awakening was a very exciting and motivating story. It contains some of the key motivational themes that launched the women’s movement. It was incredible to see how women were not only oppressed, but how they had become so accustomed to it, that they were nearly oblivious to the oppression. The one woman, Edna Pontellier, who dared to have her own feelings was looked upon as being mentally ill. The pressure was so great, that in the end, the only way that she felt she could be truly free was to take her own life.  In this paper I am going to concentrate on the characters central in Edna’s life and her relationships with them.

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 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.