Reply To: Awakenings (Year 2)

[Anonymous]

Exactly — it was a gentle, warm movie that, despite the ending, had an optimistic message.
Encephalitis lethargica is a disease called sometimes ‘sleepy sickness’, its etiology is uncertain. The typical symptoms are high fever, headaches, lethargy, motion troubles, some patients experience tremors or muscular pains. In severe cases, people enter coma-like stage, and that’s what we can see in the film.
That’s right, and that’s what I kept thinking about while watching the movie — there are countless examples of patients with diseases which made them lead atypical lives, yet they still deserve to lead them. The most recent story I’ve read about is the story of Greg, or ‘The last hippie’, as he was called by Oliver Sacks. For him, there was no recent past, no future, but only the present. The way he connected with the world and people around him by music, by rhythm, by melodies was truly amazing and moving.