Reply To: Awakenings (Year 2)

[Anonymous]

For me, there are two most important lessons in this movie. I have watched it before, so this time I looked at it differently. I wanted to see it from the perspective of someone who may work with children with neurological disorders in future.
I love main character. He was amazingly positive and compassionate towards his patiens and he was brilliant… But movie shows undoubtedly that he had no experience working with neurological patients, so him succesfully curing them was not due to his “brilliancy”. Well it was, but it was brilliancy of feeling and looking very closely at people in a place to which other doctors refer as “garden”. Noone really tried to get interested in them, seeing their cases as hopeless from the beggining. It shows that being able to help always starts with sesitivity for others. That’s the foundation. Impressive experience with patients does not always help, sometimes just makes one desensitised.
And there is the other lesson, but it is closely connected. There is a moment in which the older doctor, that main character found to ask for advice, says that patients completely stopped thinking (I believe they said that cerebral cortex stopped working?) because “alternative is unthinkable”. Really… it is not. At least, there is quite a lot stories written from the perspective of people who went completely still with active mind. Yes, those are very often horror stories but that does not mean that this cannot happen. This man behaved like there is no need to even check this scenario because it’s so horrible. Pretty bad that things so horrible that they seem unreal happen everyday.

And the film was moving and beautifull. I’m happy that usually when we got movie recommended from lecturers it is a good movie. I feel like this is a chance for students to get to know more about works of culture that we would otherwise probably ignored.