Reply To: Awakenings (Year 2)

[Anonymous]

I was really moved by this film. Leonard’s struggles reminded me, how many things in life we take for granted. It puts things into perspective, just how trivial most of our daily problems are compared to what the encephalitis patients are going through. I can’t imagine how terrible it must feel to be literally trapped inside one’s body, unable to interact with the outside world.
So it made me very happy to see a remission in Leonard’s symptoms after the inital administration of L-dopa. But at the same time, I knew that it must’d been very difficult to accept the fact that he had “been away” for almost 30 years, that the life went on while he was stuck in the moment. And watching him relapse, after he had found love and things in his life were sorting out was devastating.
Nevertheless, even if the overall story came to a bitter-sweet ending, it left me with some hope. Hope, that there will be more doctors like dr. Syer, who won’t stop their studies, who won’t give up on the seemingly hopless cases. Even if Dr. Sayer’s efforts in the end couldn’t cure Leonard and the others, they weren’t fruitless. Because in my opinion, trying and failing at least makes you learn and aquire new knowledge on the subject, which you could’t acheive by doing noting at all.