MOVIE # 8 - AWAKENINGS (1990) -- (****) In the early nineties, Penny Marshall, formerly of Laverne and Shirley on TV and wife of actor-director Rob Reiner had a pretty good run of directing movies -- this was one of them, which earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Picture but did not get the actress a well deserved nod for Best Director -- two years later she directed the superb comedy A League of Their Own (1992) which has one of the greatest lines in movie history, Theres no crying in baseball!! -- it is one of the great crimes of the Academy that they simply refuse to honor female directors with nominations even when their films are up for Best Picture -- Randa Haines was another, watching from the sidelines as Children of a Lesser God (86) was up for the big prize, but she as director was ignored -- the most famous female top be snubbed remains Barbra Streisand for The Prince of Tides (91), and of course Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty (12) though Bigelow won the Oscar in 2009 for The Hurt Locker -- Marshalls Awakenings (90) was based on the book by Dr. Oliver Saks, who in the late sixties was responsible for waking up a group of patients in the Bronx Hospital who had been in a coma like state for upwards of forty years -- Robin Williams gives the finest performance of his career as the gentle, kind Dr. Sayer, used to working in a research lab with plants, suddenly working with people -- one of those he awakens, the one he bonds with strongest is Leonard Lowe (Robert de Niro) who fell into his sleep when he was a child, and looks at the world through innocent, wondering eyes -- but the miracle is short lived and Leonard begins to have side effects to the medication which make him paranoid and angry -- he lashes out at the good doctor and begins to lose control of his body, his arms and head moving spastically while his legs no longer hold him -- Sayer knows he is losing the fight and that the patients will slip back into their comatose state very soon -- his friendship with Leonard has saved him in so many ways, and we wonder who was actually awakened by the end of the film -- Williams is miraculous as the shy introverted doctor, who is uncomfortable around people, yet whose hard work convinces the nurses to give up their pay cheques when the hospital threatens to cut the funding -- the slow evolution of his character is a wonder to behold, and why they did not nominate him for this (hell he should have won) is beyond me -- De Niro in the showier role of Leonard was indeed nominated and he is terrific, but the better work, the more challenging work was done by Williams -- Marshall allows the actors to do what they do best, obviously having a safe set for them on which to create, actors always doing their best when they feel safe -- both actors had high praise for Marshall, who went on to do that wonderfully nostalgia baseball movie that was one of the years very best -- perhaps she will once again step behind a camera.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:35:50 +0000
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