History Film / Awakenings

* DawsonCasting: Robert De Niro was 46 playing 59 year old Leonard. Justified as he hasn’t had a stressful life.

* FlowersForAlgernonSyndrome

* PlayingGertrude: Robert De Niro was 46 playing 59 year old Leonard. Justified as he hasn’t had a stressful life.

* BasedOnATrueStory: The movie is based on the book of the same name written by Oliver Sacks, the real Malcom Sayer. The characters were all real people Dr. Sacks tried L-Dopa with, with results varying from very successful to complete disasters.[[note: It should be noted that the movie ''does'' oversentamentalise a bit. Most patients were conscious and could talk, they just showed a complete lack of interest in the world and of course their Parkinsonian symptoms. Likewise, some patients continued to thrive on L-Dopa even as the movie showed the majority reverted to their Pre-Dopa states]].

* BasedOnATrueStory

Directed by Creator/PennyMarshall and with a screenplay adaptation by Creator/StevenZaillian, the film co-stars Creator/JohnHeard, Creator/JulieKavner, Penelope Ann Miller, and Creator/MaxVonSydow. Jazz legend Dexter Gordon (who died before the film's release) appears as a patient, while a then-unknown Creator/VinDiesel plays a hospital orderly.

* BittersweetEnding: Sort of. [[spoiler:It borders on DownerEnding, as everybody given the drug eventually reverts back to their catatonic state no matter how much the dosage is increased. However, the breakthroughs made led to the patients being treated more humanely afterwards. Also Malcolm finally asks Eleanor out, supposedly starting a relationship.]]

'''Frank''': Well, my parents are dead. My wife is in an institution. My son has disappeared out west somewhere. ''({{beat}})'' I feel old and I feel swindled, that's how I feel.

* AdaptationalSexuality: In the film, Dr. Sayer (AuthorAvatar for Oliver Sacks) has a romantic interest in his nurse, Eleanor. In reality, Sacks was homosexual, albeit one who was mostly celibate for most of his life.

** There is one exchange that expounds the true FridgeHorror of the catatonic situation:
--->'''Dr. Ingham:''' Most died during the acute stage of the illness, during a sleep so deep they couldn't be roused. A sleep that in most cases lasted several months. Those who survived, who awoke, seemed fine, as though nothing had happened. Years went by — five, ten, fifteen — before anyone suspected they were not well...they were not. I began to see them in the early 1930s — old people brought in by their children, young people brought in by their parents — all of them complaining they weren't themselves anymore. They'd grown distant, aloof, anti-social, they daydreamed at the dinner table. I referred them to psychiatrists. Before long they were being referred back to me. They could no longer dress themselves or feed themselves. They could no longer speak in most cases. Families went mad. People who were normal were now elsewhere.\\

* FishOutOfTemporalWater: When taken out after being revived, the catatonics are pleasantly surprised to find that Prohibition ended a long time ago, but less pleasantly surprised by how old they are now. In fact, many of them still act as if they were not just in the '20s but in ''their'' 20s.

* PyrrhicVictory: Even though the patients have been brought out of their catatonia [[spoiler:temporarily]], one patient is clearly upset about all the time he has lost.
--> '''Anthony''': [cheerfully] How's it going?\\

'''Frank''': Well, my parents are dead. My wife is in an institution. My son has disappeared out west somewhere.\\
''(beat)''\\
'''Frank''': I feel old and I feel swindled, that's how I feel.