Review of Awakenings (1990) by Dawdlingpoet — 21 Nov 2021

I found this to be quite an emotional film, its quite touching and indeed hard to watch in parts, particularly towards the end. It asks some challenging questions (as covered above, under 'genre/themes') and is well portrayed by the cast. Its quite thought provoking and I found myself surprised by some things, such as the mother of one of the patients reaction to her previously young boy being more 'with it', suddenly being an adult, having not experienced teenage or young adult life. Its hard not to feel sorry for the various characters and emotionally there are both highs and lows due to the plotline.

The main character of Dr. Malcolm Sayer comes across as both sort of plain and straight to the point, while also being clearly very devoted to his patients and to his role, to trying to better them, which made me (as a viewer) more keen to see him succeed and to see what the final outcome would be. Some of the dialogue really is quite poignant - this is a film you'll likely want tissues available for when watching.

It does raise some moral questions and is quite good at that, I suppose. I wouldn't say its overly sensationalist - if anything negative could be said about it, its perhaps the slight over use of sentimental music making it seem a bit unnecessarily cheesy from the musical score point of view, infact perhaps sentimentality in general.

I'd recommend this film, as I found it to be quite touching and thought provoking with a good plotline and its particularly well portrayed with a good cast. It may not be for everyone I suppose but for what it is, the issues it covers, I'd say its well worth a watch.