Movie Review of Awakenings

8.3/10

Acting performances of Robert De Niro (Leonard Lowe) and Robin Williams (Dr. Malcolm Sayer) are stunning and breathtaking.

I saw hope in this film, but I also saw fear in this movie. These are the two major emotions I felt in the movie. In my opinion, Dr. Sayer mainly represents hope and Leonard represents the combination of hope and fear. It does not mean that they only showed these emotions, but these emotions are noticeable in their performance.

Fear of Leonard can be observed in many scenes, even when he's healthy. After his awakening, he did not have the courage to sleep in the first night. He was afraid of losing consciousness and the ability to move.

After some days, he started to realize that all the patients were awakened, but they were not allowed to leave the hospital. He started to be feared that he would lose his/ their freedom. Fear will lead to anger.
When people are experiencing fear, they will choose to "fight or flight". Obviously, Leonard chose to run away from the Bronx hospital. However, he could not make it. Hence, he chose to fight, he resist to be dragged back to the hospital. He also fought when Dr. Sayer went to see him in the cell.

Creatures become irritated when they have poor health and dangerous situation. Leonard started to realize that he was unable to go out by his own will. His health deteriorated as well. Hence, he was much more angry in order to protect himself. His fear of losing control and had little control of everything.

His mentality was only a teenager. He had not had enough time to develop the ability to control his emotion. Especially he was experiencing such an uncontrollable and unpredictable disease.

It will be awesome if everyone can be like batman. Batman accepts and turns his fear to be his motivation and determination.